Hellingly Hospital, Sussex, December 08

[sinnerman]

After three months or so stuck on a sofa I was very glad to finaly get back out and about. Ive wanted to visit hellingly for a long time but on my previous trips down south its always been sidelined by something else but i finnaly managed to get down there today with Tumbles, RA and Lula. I know hellinglys quite well known so probebrly no need to go over the top with the history, Construction of the hosital began in 1901 to a compact arrow design of George Thomas Hine it opened in 1903 as the East Sussex County Asylum. In addition to the main Asylum buildings a number of villas were constructed arround the site including park house an acute hospital that allowed the most severe cases to be treated away from the main population of the hospital. One of the other villas served as a hosptial for mentally defective children an unusual feature at a county asylum. in 1982 when the conservative goverment announced the care in the community green paper Hellingly's name was one of those on the list for the first phase of mental hospital closures. The closure plan was initialy set at a seven year phased transfer to local council and voluntery care homes . This deadline was later extended by the government to 13 years, for Hellingly it only took 12 and the hospital closed its doors in 1994 although some of the villas remain in use as the administrative offices for the NHS trust. I was quite shocked how fucked hellingly has become in the last 14 years i do'nt know why but for some reason i didnt think it was quite so bad. We spent a good few hours wandering around inside without much idea of where anything was or where we were going, and it felt like a welcome return to oldstyle exploring. Did'nt see everything we wanted to before the light and my dodgy knee began to fail but I saw some things I dont think ive seen in reports before or at least i dont remember them, so over all it was a excellent trip and much better than being stuck on the sofa with a messed up leg watching jeremy kyle and writing about past explores.

[Tumbles]

Some of mine..





















The rest here:

http://www.whateversleft.co.uk/?p=123