West Park Asylum is in Surrey.
This asylum, along with several others (“The Epsom Cluster”), was built in the early 1900s on the outskirts of London. The asylum could hold about 2000 patients with a wide range of mental-health issues. The main part of the asylum closed in the 1990s and has slowly deteriorated over the last few years. Mother nature has reclaimed some parts, while vandals and arsonists have destroyed other parts.
Towards the end of 2009 news of its impending demolition meant the asylum became a tourist hotspot. Nearly every day hundreds of photos appeared on the forums and flickr. Your mum probably looked around before I did. I decided to go along and check it out for myself before it was too late… Baa.
Unlike previous reports, I’m not going to write much else. It’s an asylum. With corridors, wards, a main hall, doors, an engineering area, patient belongings and all sorts of stuff like that.
Oh and a padded cell – quite possibly the only one in a derelict asylum in the country.
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Fascinating pictures.
The padded cell’s an eerie place i bet ?
Are you scared when you go in to these places?
Reminds of that movie Session 9 – especially your photo of the wheelchair in the corridor.
Some really nice work, thanks.
THERE IS A SENSE OF GREAT SADNESS ATTATCHED TO THESE PHOTOGRAPHS,MEMORIES STILL LINGERING IN THE NOW MOULDERING BUILDINGS.LONG LOST FRIENDSHIPS,LOVE,HATE, DISPAIR.ALL STILL LINGERING LIKE GHOSTS.
BUILDINGS CRUMBLE BUT MEMORIES REMAIN.
THANKS …….JOHN
Those were the good old days.
I live in the area and am sad to see these buildings go, they gave character to place now it will be just another housing estate. What has happened to the former occupants?
So strange how things are just left abandoned. The coats left hanging up are especially weird; why take the care to hang them all up and then never go back for them?
Where do the inhabitants that would have been committed to an asylum end up now?
i worked there….a great place …loads of fun and laughs…..it was like one big family….everyone looked out for one another…great crack in the nurses homes and in the social club…if the walls could talk they would tell some stories…..joy sadness despair…loneliness…all the emotions…
Tell us a story Paul, just one at least!
I was a patient there!
Was admitted aged 14 in 1993 for about 6 months. I got better and was discharged, but it is really spooky seeing the place like this. My photos of the ward are of us kids ‘hanging around’ in the common room like it was yesterday. To see the place look so run down, paint peeling etc.. it makes me feel like I am a ghost looking back at somewhere that has been abandoned centuries ago. Odd!