Leybourne Grange is located right beside the M20 near Maidstone. That said, you wouldn’t know it’s there – it covers around 270 acres and is very tree-based. The trees (and fresh air etc) were meant to be good for the patients. 1200 patients.
It opened in 1936, was used for sixty years, and finally closed in 1996. There is a private school on the site which is still in use. The colony was built in the grounds of a huge manor house which still remains. The manor house also has an impressive clock tower.
A lot of the buildings are very well boarded up, but we managed to look in a few.
Hall
First stop was the main hall. This was used to entertain the patients (discos, etc) and also for religious worship as there is no chapel on site.
Inside is a fantastic little buggy, some junk, and a projection booth..
Boiler Room / Engineering
From the outside…
.. and inside is an impressive selection of boilers. There are eight huge ones, and you can climb on top of some of them.
There’s also loads of little rooms with various tools and things. There is also an office.
Kitchen / Laundry
Considering the hospital closed 10 years ago, I can’t beleive how many machines are left in the kitchen and laundry areas…
Nurses Home
This is a behemoth of a building. It’s four storeys high and it housed a million nurses (to confirm?). Every single window is smashed. Apart from the ground floor ones which were all boarded up.
Manor House
The manor house was used as an admin block. It is very secure with alarms and boarding. The clock tower is quite fancy too.
And that’s it. I missed the mortuary. I seem to always miss the mortuary at hospitals (not due to spookiness factor)…
Twitter
RSS feed
I worked here on day release in 77\78 as a borstal boy from rochester borstal. Got some fond meories of a couple of patients there…. One little girl in particular.. She would have been about 8 or 9 then…. Poor little mite was deaf dumb & blind. She used to bang her head off the wall & the only way to quieten her was to sit her on your lap and tap the bridge of her nose. To my shame i cant remember her name, but that precious girl has always stayed in my heart.
)
)
Another patient we used to call uggy…. He looked like a real caveman… A throw back to ancient history…… Great sense of humour on him
Was friendly with a student nurse at the time too…. Sally (cant remember her last name, possibly emmerson)…. Thanks for all your help sal if u read this
High Tony,
i remember the little deaf dumb and blind girl – she used to wear a yellow all-in-one bed suit. i was told her mother had had german measles whilst pregnant with her.I think she was a little blond girl – yes, she broke one’s heart….so beautiful.
if i remember she was on cc4 which is where i worked and her name was melanie and was adopted by a nurse called jenny and her family …
Memories !!! I remember Uggy ! I was a police cadet in 78 and spent one month on attachment at LG. Very ironic that police cadets and borstal boys were working there at the same time. A lady called Mrs Cincaldey or something similar use to be responsble for us all. I remember taking a group of patients to Margate beach and Uggy absolutely flipped (more with enjoyment ) when he got onto the sand. He threw sand everywhere and he ran off down the beach with us chasing after him !! We took the patients into a pub on the seafront and a local journalist complained that this shouldn’t be allowed. However the pub landlord was more then happy with us being there and said if he had known we were coming he would have got someone to play the piano for the patients! The things we remember…..
I spent much of my time on ward CC2 which was for children who were under 16 and in wheelchairs. My first week I cried every night on the phone to my parents but by the end of the month I loved working with these children. ‘Patrick’ was a lad whose head was the size of his body and spent all of his time lying on a bean bag. An irish nurse would walk pass him and say to him ‘Are you looking up my skirt again you dirty boy’. You would then hear this deep throaty laugh which was the only sound you would ever hear from him. Shirley Bassey (called Shirley because she looked like her) was a young girl who had to have all her teeth removed because she constantly chewed her hands. It didn’t stop her from putting her hands in her mouth though so that she ended up with sores around her mouth. I remember much more but am so glad that the hospital doesn’t exist any more…….
Hi I worked at Leybourne, started as a cadet nurse in 1976, we had Borstal boys and police cadets there at that time. yes i also remember the young blond girl on CC4 so very sad, i think she was fostered by one of the nursing assistants who worked there. The lady in charge of the police cadets was Mrs Calcarry who drove a mini. nursing cadets had sister Lots of sad memories from that place, and also memories of cockroaches in the hospital block, always remember the sound of them crunching under your feet when you walked down the wards at night, such a scarry place even then.
How would i go about finding an Uncle of mine PAUL DALE whom was here from a very early age, and never spoken about by the family. Thanks for any help
Hi, i’m wondering if anyone knows if anything is still standing and still accessible? Also if anyone has gone up there lately what is the security like, is it too late to visit?? Please post back ASAP as would love to visit.
Thanks
All of the Villas, Outbuildings, Nurses Accomodation Block etc at Leybourne Grange have been demolished. All that remains is the Manor House, which is boarded up. There is also a Security Guard stationed right outside the front of the house, so if you do go up to take a look, be careful.
hello, i find all this stuff very interesting and am trying to find out more about the site, why are you glad its shut down ? thank you