My first report - I posted cringe about this site, so I was obligated to make a report. The writing might be mediocre and I'm an inexperienced photographer with a new lens. This also means a lot of the shots I took ended up unusable, so this report is less picture heavy than I hoped.
Useful criticism more than welcomed, but I digress:
Twenty years later, in 1924, the building was converted to a prepatory school and spent the next 50 years at least as one. When it closed is not well documented, with a former student statring it closed in 1977 according to one local history site.
The latest chapter starts in 1984 when Westbury House became Westbury House Care Home, which continued uneventfully until it's forced closure in 2016. The Care Quality Commission had found that Carehome had failed to provide the bare minimum for care and the residents were kept in unsafe conditions. But it doesn't end there! Because private financial and medical documents were kept on site, free to be picked through by any urban explorer who walked in. Even after the BBC publicized this failing, the owner of the site (and former managers) still took 18 months to actually have the private documents removed, despite promising to do so when the BBC first published it. She also claimed it was the responsibility of the CQC, the local council, and the fault of tresspassers. The owners of the site seem to have some interesting history, but that is out of the purview of this writeup.
And when we emerged from the trees and fields, the beautiful country house stretched out ahead of us. When we first drove past, earlier that day, it was so perfect I couldn't help but laugh. Seeing it ahead of me again made me feel the same. We forged on.
The field, closer to the house, contained a few weird things. Signs of a swimming pool, long filled in, and the bottom of a chair were both very close to the fence and slightly eerie finds.
I'm by no means a chair-leg expert, but the bottom of the chair did seem to be the sort of function-focused semi-industrial design I'd expected to find in a medical sort of place. Forgive my focus on this, it was odd.
We moved in. The fence was double-wide at some points, but it was hardly high-security.
Two closer shots of the rear of the building. The entryway had been kicked open, and we saw an old printer-scanner had been smashed on the ground outside. Maybe thrown from an upstairs window.
And the classic sign on what remained of the plywood.
Just outside the door, shown above, were a lot of old pieces of furniture.
Inside was a common room -bookshelves lined one wall, and a peculiar kitchenette was on the far right of the room - the white tile was at odds with the wood of the room, and it seemed wildly out of place to me. There was also a bag of human shit
Other than that delightful find, the room was covered in debris - mostly brickwork, but a sizable majority of interesting finds: Books, many torn and ruined but a surprising amount still in good condition, mostly undamaged; games and toys in poor condition, I don't think there was a single item of this sort that wasn't smashed up; and VHS tapes, most charmingly. Lots of old movies on tapes, once kept on the lower shelves but pulled out onto the floor by someone.
Hangman! Eerie!
The kitchenette once had a fridge, a few sinks, and presumably other appliances on the counterspace. I didn't see any chairs in this room, which is odd - a place to make tea, or coffee. Books and games, but nowhere to sit? I suppose they must've been dumped outside, like some of what we saw.
The floor in this room, directly infront of the entry, was collapsing in. We took a wide berth around it, once I leant over and got a good picture. Putting the weight of my foot down on it felt exceptionally risky, with the wood noticably shifting even in the few seconds I stood there.
We moved on.
The adjascent room, not pictured, was similar - containing a piano, and an ironic booklet on the quality of care at the former carehome. It backed onto the foyer, featuring an enormous grand wooden staircase. Unfortunately, we couldn't remain in this part for long - closer to the front of the building was riskier, due to nearby activity. We moved deeper into the building and used an alternative concrete staircase to traverse the building.
The rest of the building had less to note: Mostly consisting of rooms, stripped back with minimal things of interest in them. A few reminders of the more medical side did remain around the building:
And a few interesting sights from the rooms:
As said, the rooms themselves were a mixed bag. A few were dirty, with mimimal furniture. Just a dirty bed, for instance and smashed windows. Others were like the above - overgrown, filthy, covered in spray paint and rotting entirely out. And the third catagory, worse still. A few rooms on the upper floors were gone, entirely. They had collapsed downwards, taking the room beneath out with them. A weird mix.
The higher floors were increasingly sketchy, and judging from the hazadous materials bags and weird fibrous masses, infested with asbestos. We spent little time here.
Another location we hoped to see, the roof, was inaccessible as the walkways had collapsed down, through the ceiling and into the floors below.
To end on: a rather bad picture of the foyer, featuring the wooden staircase to the left.
Previous reports of this place show it in markedly better condition, though of course hardly "good" condition. The previous report on this place notes the same thing. It's almost like decay happens as time passes...
Anyway, that's it. I hoped to have more pictures, but most of them are unusable. Thus concludes my first report.
Useful criticism more than welcomed, but I digress:
Westbury House
History:
The history of the building as it stands begins in 1904, where the former building was burnt to the ground and the current one built in it's place. This seems to be why the rest of the grounds, the ice house and stables, are listed but the building itself isn't. They're some distance from the House itself, and seem to be presently occupied.Twenty years later, in 1924, the building was converted to a prepatory school and spent the next 50 years at least as one. When it closed is not well documented, with a former student statring it closed in 1977 according to one local history site.
The latest chapter starts in 1984 when Westbury House became Westbury House Care Home, which continued uneventfully until it's forced closure in 2016. The Care Quality Commission had found that Carehome had failed to provide the bare minimum for care and the residents were kept in unsafe conditions. But it doesn't end there! Because private financial and medical documents were kept on site, free to be picked through by any urban explorer who walked in. Even after the BBC publicized this failing, the owner of the site (and former managers) still took 18 months to actually have the private documents removed, despite promising to do so when the BBC first published it. She also claimed it was the responsibility of the CQC, the local council, and the fault of tresspassers. The owners of the site seem to have some interesting history, but that is out of the purview of this writeup.
The Explore:
This site featured some roadblocks from the front, so my 'splorin partner - @TheRuminator, who is to thank for some of these photos - and I elected to approach from the back. We went way far out and moved back in...
And when we emerged from the trees and fields, the beautiful country house stretched out ahead of us. When we first drove past, earlier that day, it was so perfect I couldn't help but laugh. Seeing it ahead of me again made me feel the same. We forged on.
The field, closer to the house, contained a few weird things. Signs of a swimming pool, long filled in, and the bottom of a chair were both very close to the fence and slightly eerie finds.
I'm by no means a chair-leg expert, but the bottom of the chair did seem to be the sort of function-focused semi-industrial design I'd expected to find in a medical sort of place. Forgive my focus on this, it was odd.
We moved in. The fence was double-wide at some points, but it was hardly high-security.
Two closer shots of the rear of the building. The entryway had been kicked open, and we saw an old printer-scanner had been smashed on the ground outside. Maybe thrown from an upstairs window.
And the classic sign on what remained of the plywood.
Just outside the door, shown above, were a lot of old pieces of furniture.
Inside was a common room -bookshelves lined one wall, and a peculiar kitchenette was on the far right of the room - the white tile was at odds with the wood of the room, and it seemed wildly out of place to me. There was also a bag of human shit
Other than that delightful find, the room was covered in debris - mostly brickwork, but a sizable majority of interesting finds: Books, many torn and ruined but a surprising amount still in good condition, mostly undamaged; games and toys in poor condition, I don't think there was a single item of this sort that wasn't smashed up; and VHS tapes, most charmingly. Lots of old movies on tapes, once kept on the lower shelves but pulled out onto the floor by someone.
Hangman! Eerie!
The kitchenette once had a fridge, a few sinks, and presumably other appliances on the counterspace. I didn't see any chairs in this room, which is odd - a place to make tea, or coffee. Books and games, but nowhere to sit? I suppose they must've been dumped outside, like some of what we saw.
The floor in this room, directly infront of the entry, was collapsing in. We took a wide berth around it, once I leant over and got a good picture. Putting the weight of my foot down on it felt exceptionally risky, with the wood noticably shifting even in the few seconds I stood there.
We moved on.
The adjascent room, not pictured, was similar - containing a piano, and an ironic booklet on the quality of care at the former carehome. It backed onto the foyer, featuring an enormous grand wooden staircase. Unfortunately, we couldn't remain in this part for long - closer to the front of the building was riskier, due to nearby activity. We moved deeper into the building and used an alternative concrete staircase to traverse the building.
The rest of the building had less to note: Mostly consisting of rooms, stripped back with minimal things of interest in them. A few reminders of the more medical side did remain around the building:
And a few interesting sights from the rooms:
As said, the rooms themselves were a mixed bag. A few were dirty, with mimimal furniture. Just a dirty bed, for instance and smashed windows. Others were like the above - overgrown, filthy, covered in spray paint and rotting entirely out. And the third catagory, worse still. A few rooms on the upper floors were gone, entirely. They had collapsed downwards, taking the room beneath out with them. A weird mix.
The higher floors were increasingly sketchy, and judging from the hazadous materials bags and weird fibrous masses, infested with asbestos. We spent little time here.
Another location we hoped to see, the roof, was inaccessible as the walkways had collapsed down, through the ceiling and into the floors below.
To end on: a rather bad picture of the foyer, featuring the wooden staircase to the left.
Previous reports of this place show it in markedly better condition, though of course hardly "good" condition. The previous report on this place notes the same thing. It's almost like decay happens as time passes...
Anyway, that's it. I hoped to have more pictures, but most of them are unusable. Thus concludes my first report.
