Wednesday 30 November 2011

Stone House Hospital/City of London Lunatic Asylum

Stone House Hospital, formerly the City of London Lunatic Asylum, was a hospital and former mental illness treatment facility in Stone, near Dartford, Kent



Stone House was originally constructed at a cost of £65,000 between 1862 and 1866 at the behest of the London Commissioners in Lunacy to provide for pauper lunatics from the London

The buildings were designed in a Tudor Revival architecture style by James Bunstone Bunning, and the facility accommodated 220 patients. The asylum grounds, at first 33 acres and later expanded to 140 acres included a working farm. 




After 1892, the asylum was able to take "private" patients (patients whose fees were paid by their families, or from pensions). The influx of private patients resulted in a budget surplus, and enabled expansion and improvements of the asylum's facilities. In 1924 the facility was renamed the City of London Mental Hospital, and in 1948 it was taken over by the new National Health Service and became known as Stone House Hospital. A 1998 assessment by Thames Healthcare suggested that the hospital was not suited for modern healthcare; plans for the hospital's closure were initiated in 2003 by West Kent NHS.



Among its most famous patients was the poet and composer Ivor Gurney, who resided there from 1922 until his death in 1937.

Closed in November 2007 and currently being redeveloped into luxury Houses/Flats




























Un-nammed Hospital in Essex

Just that, a hospital in sunny Essex, started its life as an asylum and ended up as one of the NHS's abandoned Hopitals.


Un-named as it's unchaved and has sooooo much more to be explored before the metal thieves and arsonists find it

From the turn of the Century




















Thursday 24 November 2011

Detached Bastion - Dover

The North Centre and Detached Bastions are located between the Drop Redoubt and the Citadel on the Western Heights. Their purpose was to assist in defending the northern approaches to Dover, particularly from the Folkestone Road, along which it was envisaged Napoleon and the French Grand Army would attack.


Work on the North Centre Bastion began in 1804 as part of the main Western Heights works, although it was incomplete in 1815 when Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo. In 1859 the Royal Commission which called for modification across the Western Heights reviewed the unfinished North Centre Bastion. Work began on its completion and the construction of the Detached Bastion and its caponier. They were armed throughout the main phase of occupation at the Western Heights, but along with the rest of the fortress, its decline was rapid and at the turn of the century its guns were removed. The bastions saw very little use after this time, with only local defence use during both World Wars.

A copy of the 1871 map of the Detached Bastion
  
The Army relinquished the Western Heights after the Second World War and the North Centre and Detached Bastions have remained empty and unused since. Despite the surrounding ditches becoming very overgrown.







The views over Dover from the top of the Bastion, the building in the second one is Westmount College, another bloody good explore
Click to see it >>>>>>>

http://nellyurbex.blogspot.com/2011/07/westmount-college-dover-june-2011.html