Visited with Alir147 about a month ago.

This place has been visited by many people before, but I'd never seen anything like it ("An entire village? Empty?!"), so I persuaded Ali to take me on a day off work.

Brief history stolen from Wikipedia for those who aren't familiar with it.

The hospital was modelled on the Alt Scherbitz asylum of the 1870s, near Leipzig in Germany, and represents one of the first "colony" plan psychiatric hospitals in Scotland. The Bangour institution comprised individual villas which would house approximately 30 patients each. The village also incorporated its own railway station, a farm, bakery, workshops, recreation hall, school, shop, library, and latterly, and a multi-denominational church.

The hospital was requisitioned by the government War Office during both wars when it became "Edinburgh War Hospital" and "The Scottish Emergency Medical Hospital", reverting back to a psychiatric hospital between and after the wars.

The number of patients rose to over 3,000 in 1918. Temporary marquees and prefabricated huts were erected to cope with the demand for bed space, for both patients and staff. This led to the creation of Bangour General Hospital in the surrounding grounds, which was to become a world leader in many medical fields, in particular its esteemed burns and plastic surgery unit which was established in 1940. It also had a 1st class Maternity Unit serving the whole of the county.

In 1989, St John's Hospital opened in nearby Livingston, and services were transferred from Bangour General Hospital, which closed in the early 1990s. The Village Hospital also started to wind down after the opening of St Johns, with the last remaining ward closing in 2004.


Didn't go inside, as it was just a first visit and there's more than enough to see on the outside. This place is incredibly eery. Road markings, street lights, bus stops etc. All overgrown, it was great. I was very impressed by the security, they were really on the ball. Within about 60 seconds of stepping foot on the site a guard drove over to us and we had a chat.
(I've left the panoramas at 800px wide, I hope that's okay? Not going to see a thing on them otherwise because the height is so shallow).