Essex County Hospital - 2019
An introduction
Having logged this onto the list at some point in early 2019, it sat on our list of priorities for a relatively short time before hopping on a few trains with the hope of capturing something worthwhile. From what we knew the hospital should have offered a handful of theatres as well as rooms formerly home to machinery along with a scattering of wards, so it came as a nice surprise to see ourselves in a nicely dated, yet modern, medical estate.
Phone Image: External view of the hospital with outpatients & X-ray to the left, original hospital centre, radiology to the right, children's ward to the background right
The history
Essex County Hospital sometimes referred to as the "County", known first as the Essex and Colchester Hospital, was born from the idea to create a general hospital for the poor with the thinking coming from a Colchester Archdeacon (Archdeacon: a senior church clergy member) by the name of Joseph Jefferson leading to the creation for one of the first British hospitals for the poor.
His idea first came into action around 1918 upon the deconstruction of numerous Army barracks when Joseph and seven other men, who he had convinced to join in on this idea, purchased a plot of land within Colchester and the former Colchester Military Hospital buildings. With this the building was deconstructed and rebuilt on this new site at Lexden Road before the hospitals' opening in 1820.
Upon opening management would fall under a committee headed by the Lord Lieutenant of Essex within a board of subscribers and other public figures such as the mayor of Colchester. This committee would delegate the first key members of staff including surgeons, physicians, matrons, a porter and nurses to work within the hospital funded by the subscriptions.
The initial hospital would have been formed of a small block consisting of only two floors housing 80 beds, before later wings would be added in 1839 and a 2nd floor addition in around 1890. This initial hospital building would later form the reception and admin quarters of the hospital in later life. Within this initial compact block several wards would be housed along with porters' rooms, a dining room, an operating theatre as well as other smaller amenities such as laundry.
Funding of the hospital, as patients would have little to no money and no nationalised health system was in place, would be raised through means of investments and subscriptions as well as gifts through means of fund raising by both staff and the wider community although the cost of treatment far outweighed the cashflow into the hospital.
With this funding situation and the culture of the time, admittance of patients was carefully selected. Usually the criteria for patents was those that had a good chance of recovery without the risk of causing infection across the wards. For those that met this their admission was selected through board meetings were subscribers selected patients for admission under medical advice. Patients that failed to adhere to, what could be considered strict, rules within the hospital or caused trouble were discharged from the hospital prematurely with little chance of being let back in.
(1890s - 1910s)
The second most notable buildings on site would see construction by the celebration of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee which saw a large nurses' home erected to the west allowing areas within the hospital used for non-patient care freed up for more wards.
Within the later decade a dedicated children's ward would appear onsite which took place of a small private ward and in the following three years (1911) the new chapel was adjoined to the mortuary (Marked as the "dead house") along with the construction of an isolation ward, laboratory and pathology which further expanded onto the hospital's site.
(WW1)
As with most general and mental hospitals in 1914, the war effort saw efforts pushed towards treating recovering patients from military hospitals from around the country and as a result wooden huts were constructed on site to bolster the numbers that, the now named, Essex County Hospital could handle. Surprisingly the care a conditions of this facility soon saw wounded servicemen admitted directly into the hospital rather than just the recovering transferred from neighbouring military hospitals. This saw women's' care, in specific, re-directed elsewhere to further increase potential admissions from the ambulance trains.
(Post WW1 - 1930)
Post war nursing numbers increased as by-product of the hospital's growth and the growth of women drafted into the medical field during wartime. The two Netley huts built to increase bed numbers during the war were retained and the hospital that had existed prior to the war continued on.
Further expansions took place onto the hospital with the eastern wing becoming the outpatients' department seeing the addition of X-Rays, Dental Rooms and individual patient rooms with the wartime huts seeing refurbishment.
(1930s - WW2)
In the following decade, and in the eventual lead up to the second global conflict, the wooden huts of the first world war were discarded in substitution for newer wards with 40 beds each. As the war broke out the hospitals capacity was temporarily raised above 250 beds from its' designed capacity of around 200 with the buildings becoming part of Emergency Medical Service.
(Post WW2 - 1960s)
Following the formation of the NHS in 1948 the hospital was one of the first to join the scheme. As patient numbers and demand grew the already modern facilities were overwhelmed and the 1910's wooden huts were re-employed for blood donation facilities although shuttered five years on to make space for the new block of three operating theatres.
The operating theatres would be constructed and operational by around 1955 allowing much older surgery within the initial hospital to retire in the later years. These threatres would later be reduced to two yet they remained mostly original right up until closure.
As more investment was put into the hospital the older western block would be replaced by 1964 for a radiotherapy block which in itself contained wards and numerous treatment rooms.
(1970s - 2000s)
For most of the hospital's duration it had been classified as a non-teaching hospital although in 1969 a post-graduate and later training block would be added between the operating theatres and nurses home. This investment also saw a general expansion and improvement to the 1930s outpatients wing along with an improved children's ward.
(2000's - Closure)
Due to the small size of Essex County Hospital and the movement to medical services being based from single larger hospitals, services soon started to decline along with bed capacity.
Through the early 2010s until 2018 the hospitals services slowly started to shuffle elsewhere within the building with other smaller or more specialist treatments moving to neighbouring hospitals. Through this time the operating theatres, which are considerably outdated in todays' environment, would become for use as eye surgery only.
Eventually by Christmas of 2018 the hospital was completely vacant. Almost.
From this point everything stood still with the original buildings seeing continued occupation by Global Guardians (essentially a security company that you pay to be security for whilst living in a derelict building) and the rest periodically checked by irregular security visits as well as the guardians themselves.
Nurses Home, external
An overview
This report only covers two sections of the hospital in any detail with these being the radiology and the operating theatres.
We managed to cover a few of the other buildings and wards but since we were rushed for time I have very little to show for these.
I'm also aware I have posted these photos before but with very little backing information.
The Visits
For the most part, our visits were conducted with very little prior knowledge so it was a case of turning up and seeing what we could squeeze into.
Radiology: First and Third Visit.
Our first venture went fairly well, almost, after finding ourselves dropping in an almost impossible to escape window and landing ourselves in the radiology department. We spent a little while figuring out what we were poking around until we came across the first of three radiology machines humming away in some concrete walled rooms.
So after shooting these for a while we soon both noticed the distinct smell of weed that had wafted into the building. Curious, I waddled out of a door way and then stepped back in after sighting someone inside. We sussed that, with it not being security, our best idea was to make our way out and hope we didn't get cau.... bollocks.
Turns out that the person inside was one of the tenants who had rented a space within the building under the global guardians scheme and was happy to usher us out before security turned up later in the day.
We'd come back to this building on our final visit and finish off the upstairs section before moving into the original hospital and taking a quick peek around the outpatients wards. Thankfully with less hassle, as attempted cable theft had allowed us to walk in through a plant room and into the ward.
Stairwell
Upper ward corridor
Ward
Smaller side ward
One of the three, partially stripped, radio therapy machines
Reception and a rubbish cart.
Operating Theatres: 2nd and 3rd visit.
About two or three months later we returned with some loose knowledge on the operating theatre block. After hopping onto the roof we were in and peeking into some of the recovery wards, which although they were converted to use as waiting rooms remained relatively original.
The main theatre rooms were what we had came for, supposedly having not been upgraded much since opening it was highly likely that the lights should have remained. In their later life these rooms were mostly focused on eye surgery with most emergency and general procedures relocated long before closure. We had hoped for a lot of the equipment to still be somewhere inside and with some of the lights already on it seemed a little too promising.
A view into theatre 1 from the patient corridors.
Theatre 1 shot square to the control panel wall, with a radiator peeking in on the action
Theatre 2 seen from the shared scrub room
Theatre 2's control panel, light, gas ports and electrical port all in one corner.
The lights, Hanaulux Melbournes, were very similar with the only difference being the rings around the lamps being silver on number 2's
Room lights off, surgical lamp on.
Outpatients: 3rd Visit
This area we only covered on our last visit after we discovered that the fire doors had external emergency releases.
We could hear music from a television in the original section of the hospital so we rushed around to see if anything interesting remained. The X-Ray and dental rooms were empty with the only suggestion of the rooms' use being their signage. After some prior research i was busy trying to find the hall styled waiting room but with no luck. So we left.
Lazers and other fun, slightly dangerous stuff, long since removed
Eye test board
Overall a nice little hospital which has now come under the capture of demolition and renovation with a lot of bits left unseen.
An introduction
Having logged this onto the list at some point in early 2019, it sat on our list of priorities for a relatively short time before hopping on a few trains with the hope of capturing something worthwhile. From what we knew the hospital should have offered a handful of theatres as well as rooms formerly home to machinery along with a scattering of wards, so it came as a nice surprise to see ourselves in a nicely dated, yet modern, medical estate.
Phone Image: External view of the hospital with outpatients & X-ray to the left, original hospital centre, radiology to the right, children's ward to the background right
The history
Source Material:
Great Wartime Hospitals (COLCHESTER: Essex County Hospital, Lexden Road)
University Of Essex (Essex County Hospital Remembered | University of Essex)
NHS (Essex County Hospital: the end of an era - East Suffolk & North Essex NHS Foundation Trust)
British History (Hospitals | British History Online)
There is a fair chunk of history that has been omitted as the primary focus is on the buildings themselves but I'd highly recommend looking at the sources for further reading.
A much more detailed report by: mockney reject
(Report - - The Essex County Hospital, Colchester – Various 2014-2018 | Asylums and Hospitals)
Great Wartime Hospitals (COLCHESTER: Essex County Hospital, Lexden Road)
University Of Essex (Essex County Hospital Remembered | University of Essex)
NHS (Essex County Hospital: the end of an era - East Suffolk & North Essex NHS Foundation Trust)
British History (Hospitals | British History Online)
There is a fair chunk of history that has been omitted as the primary focus is on the buildings themselves but I'd highly recommend looking at the sources for further reading.
A much more detailed report by: mockney reject
(Report - - The Essex County Hospital, Colchester – Various 2014-2018 | Asylums and Hospitals)
Essex County Hospital sometimes referred to as the "County", known first as the Essex and Colchester Hospital, was born from the idea to create a general hospital for the poor with the thinking coming from a Colchester Archdeacon (Archdeacon: a senior church clergy member) by the name of Joseph Jefferson leading to the creation for one of the first British hospitals for the poor.
His idea first came into action around 1918 upon the deconstruction of numerous Army barracks when Joseph and seven other men, who he had convinced to join in on this idea, purchased a plot of land within Colchester and the former Colchester Military Hospital buildings. With this the building was deconstructed and rebuilt on this new site at Lexden Road before the hospitals' opening in 1820.
Upon opening management would fall under a committee headed by the Lord Lieutenant of Essex within a board of subscribers and other public figures such as the mayor of Colchester. This committee would delegate the first key members of staff including surgeons, physicians, matrons, a porter and nurses to work within the hospital funded by the subscriptions.
The initial hospital would have been formed of a small block consisting of only two floors housing 80 beds, before later wings would be added in 1839 and a 2nd floor addition in around 1890. This initial hospital building would later form the reception and admin quarters of the hospital in later life. Within this initial compact block several wards would be housed along with porters' rooms, a dining room, an operating theatre as well as other smaller amenities such as laundry.
Funding of the hospital, as patients would have little to no money and no nationalised health system was in place, would be raised through means of investments and subscriptions as well as gifts through means of fund raising by both staff and the wider community although the cost of treatment far outweighed the cashflow into the hospital.
With this funding situation and the culture of the time, admittance of patients was carefully selected. Usually the criteria for patents was those that had a good chance of recovery without the risk of causing infection across the wards. For those that met this their admission was selected through board meetings were subscribers selected patients for admission under medical advice. Patients that failed to adhere to, what could be considered strict, rules within the hospital or caused trouble were discharged from the hospital prematurely with little chance of being let back in.
(1890s - 1910s)
The second most notable buildings on site would see construction by the celebration of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee which saw a large nurses' home erected to the west allowing areas within the hospital used for non-patient care freed up for more wards.
Within the later decade a dedicated children's ward would appear onsite which took place of a small private ward and in the following three years (1911) the new chapel was adjoined to the mortuary (Marked as the "dead house") along with the construction of an isolation ward, laboratory and pathology which further expanded onto the hospital's site.
(WW1)
As with most general and mental hospitals in 1914, the war effort saw efforts pushed towards treating recovering patients from military hospitals from around the country and as a result wooden huts were constructed on site to bolster the numbers that, the now named, Essex County Hospital could handle. Surprisingly the care a conditions of this facility soon saw wounded servicemen admitted directly into the hospital rather than just the recovering transferred from neighbouring military hospitals. This saw women's' care, in specific, re-directed elsewhere to further increase potential admissions from the ambulance trains.
(Post WW1 - 1930)
Post war nursing numbers increased as by-product of the hospital's growth and the growth of women drafted into the medical field during wartime. The two Netley huts built to increase bed numbers during the war were retained and the hospital that had existed prior to the war continued on.
Further expansions took place onto the hospital with the eastern wing becoming the outpatients' department seeing the addition of X-Rays, Dental Rooms and individual patient rooms with the wartime huts seeing refurbishment.
(1930s - WW2)
In the following decade, and in the eventual lead up to the second global conflict, the wooden huts of the first world war were discarded in substitution for newer wards with 40 beds each. As the war broke out the hospitals capacity was temporarily raised above 250 beds from its' designed capacity of around 200 with the buildings becoming part of Emergency Medical Service.
(Post WW2 - 1960s)
Following the formation of the NHS in 1948 the hospital was one of the first to join the scheme. As patient numbers and demand grew the already modern facilities were overwhelmed and the 1910's wooden huts were re-employed for blood donation facilities although shuttered five years on to make space for the new block of three operating theatres.
The operating theatres would be constructed and operational by around 1955 allowing much older surgery within the initial hospital to retire in the later years. These threatres would later be reduced to two yet they remained mostly original right up until closure.
As more investment was put into the hospital the older western block would be replaced by 1964 for a radiotherapy block which in itself contained wards and numerous treatment rooms.
(1970s - 2000s)
For most of the hospital's duration it had been classified as a non-teaching hospital although in 1969 a post-graduate and later training block would be added between the operating theatres and nurses home. This investment also saw a general expansion and improvement to the 1930s outpatients wing along with an improved children's ward.
(2000's - Closure)
Due to the small size of Essex County Hospital and the movement to medical services being based from single larger hospitals, services soon started to decline along with bed capacity.
Through the early 2010s until 2018 the hospitals services slowly started to shuffle elsewhere within the building with other smaller or more specialist treatments moving to neighbouring hospitals. Through this time the operating theatres, which are considerably outdated in todays' environment, would become for use as eye surgery only.
Eventually by Christmas of 2018 the hospital was completely vacant. Almost.
From this point everything stood still with the original buildings seeing continued occupation by Global Guardians (essentially a security company that you pay to be security for whilst living in a derelict building) and the rest periodically checked by irregular security visits as well as the guardians themselves.
Nurses Home, external
An overview
This report only covers two sections of the hospital in any detail with these being the radiology and the operating theatres.
We managed to cover a few of the other buildings and wards but since we were rushed for time I have very little to show for these.
I'm also aware I have posted these photos before but with very little backing information.
The Visits
For the most part, our visits were conducted with very little prior knowledge so it was a case of turning up and seeing what we could squeeze into.
Radiology: First and Third Visit.
Our first venture went fairly well, almost, after finding ourselves dropping in an almost impossible to escape window and landing ourselves in the radiology department. We spent a little while figuring out what we were poking around until we came across the first of three radiology machines humming away in some concrete walled rooms.
So after shooting these for a while we soon both noticed the distinct smell of weed that had wafted into the building. Curious, I waddled out of a door way and then stepped back in after sighting someone inside. We sussed that, with it not being security, our best idea was to make our way out and hope we didn't get cau.... bollocks.
Turns out that the person inside was one of the tenants who had rented a space within the building under the global guardians scheme and was happy to usher us out before security turned up later in the day.
We'd come back to this building on our final visit and finish off the upstairs section before moving into the original hospital and taking a quick peek around the outpatients wards. Thankfully with less hassle, as attempted cable theft had allowed us to walk in through a plant room and into the ward.
Stairwell
Upper ward corridor
Ward
Smaller side ward
One of the three, partially stripped, radio therapy machines
Reception and a rubbish cart.
Operating Theatres: 2nd and 3rd visit.
About two or three months later we returned with some loose knowledge on the operating theatre block. After hopping onto the roof we were in and peeking into some of the recovery wards, which although they were converted to use as waiting rooms remained relatively original.
The main theatre rooms were what we had came for, supposedly having not been upgraded much since opening it was highly likely that the lights should have remained. In their later life these rooms were mostly focused on eye surgery with most emergency and general procedures relocated long before closure. We had hoped for a lot of the equipment to still be somewhere inside and with some of the lights already on it seemed a little too promising.
A view into theatre 1 from the patient corridors.
Theatre 1 shot square to the control panel wall, with a radiator peeking in on the action
Theatre 2 seen from the shared scrub room
Theatre 2's control panel, light, gas ports and electrical port all in one corner.
The lights, Hanaulux Melbournes, were very similar with the only difference being the rings around the lamps being silver on number 2's
Room lights off, surgical lamp on.
Outpatients: 3rd Visit
This area we only covered on our last visit after we discovered that the fire doors had external emergency releases.
We could hear music from a television in the original section of the hospital so we rushed around to see if anything interesting remained. The X-Ray and dental rooms were empty with the only suggestion of the rooms' use being their signage. After some prior research i was busy trying to find the hall styled waiting room but with no luck. So we left.
Lazers and other fun, slightly dangerous stuff, long since removed
Eye test board
Overall a nice little hospital which has now come under the capture of demolition and renovation with a lot of bits left unseen.
That'll be all
KP_
KP_
