Background
2 Eejits 17 Asylums
You all know I love a good roundup post and I’m incapable of being concise. Well this one is going to be so long I’m still having to split it into three parts. Over the past few years, @KismetJ and I have done an asylum trip to Scotland (report here) and several to Wales (report here). It was about time we finally took the plunge to Ireland to complete the set. We were pretty hyped about the variety and selection of asylums over there, although as I always try to remind myself, we were aware that urbex can be unexpectedly disappointing, and surprising.
I’d wanted to do an Ireland roadtrip for years, and with family connections there it was a long overdue return to roots. My grandad moved from to London at the age of 14. He always tells me how rough the sea was coming over, and his uncle’s solution to his seasickness was handing him a pack of beers. ‘Get it down yer pet’. During the planning of the trip, I also found out that my great grandad had a direct connection to the asylums, and spent much of his later life in St. Lomans. I’ll go into this more in part 2, but it was a surprise to find out.
Of course I’ve got to reference the contemporaries, so I’ll refer you to Speed’s 2017 roundup report, and Cloth Head’s roundup report and Camera Shy’s assorted reports from 2016. Urbandoned have also done several great reports in recent years. Things have clearly changed since, with secca cracking down and places deteriorating more rapidly.
The route with hospitals shown in yellow
We began by mapping out the asylums, choosing to include still-active sites for comprehension, even if just for externals. We didn’t reach every asylum, but there’s about 29 and we managed to visit 17 plus another two mental hospitals. We then started to research and prioritise, and drew a route which conveniently formed a 1,000-mile circuit from Belfast to Cork, then back via Dublin. It did mean that taking our time to crack the more difficult places sadly wasn’t an option.
Next, Kismet managed to find hotels which would serve as our ‘checkpoints’ along the way. I know some of you will say hotels are for pussies, but honestly how are you supposed to sustain the energy and willpower to explore for 6 days and camp every night? I enjoy wildcamping, but I was completely destroyed by the end of this trip thanks to exertion and illness, without the added risk of waking up to a fox getting frisky.
Once we had the overall plan down and the hotels sorted, we just had to get packing. I’d also received a DM from @Bugsuperstar who was keen to meet up and do some exploring. Big shoutout to him for showing us some great bits and making sure we weren’t completely alone abroad. There were a few setbacks with the trip though. I hadn’t explored in a couple of months so wasn’t sure how much I’d be back into the swing. This was partly due to my camera suddenly going dead and having to send it for repair. Hoping a new one wasn’t going to have to be forked out for last minute, the camera thankfully arrived several days before my flight.
Observations on the Current Situation
To summarise what the asylum situation is like in Ireland - there’s loads compared to England and Wales. The large majority haven’t yet been put out of use by the health service, so there’s certainly going to be more to come, unlike here where the majority are now demolished/converted. Having said that, the abandoned ones are feeling increasingly difficult. It wasn’t quite the Euro-level of lax security we were hoping for, they’re definitely cottoning on to urbex and some that we were expecting to be easy were surrounded by fresh fencing or guards.
There’s a lot of future potential still though, so hopefully this report highlights some of those previously overlooked asylums and provides a general update. I would have liked to have gotten into one of the tidier disused asylums, but we had about 200 miles and four hospitals to cover per day, so it didn’t allow the time nor the energy for any more carefully-planned missions. It was a whistle-stop tour, but now I already want to go back. Of all the places we saw, my favourites were probably the active hospitals we wandered into. It was nice to see something not done on here before, even if fleeting and discreet. Such photos were taken on my phone as not to cause a fuss, but I'd like to have used the camera.
The hire car we'd be using for the week
The Radial Asylum Plan
I must recommend the absolutely ultimate book Walls of Containment by Patrick Quinlan. It’s maybe the best asylum architecture book ever made, complete with top notch photography taken with free-reign of the health service’s hospitals. If only the English and Welsh asylums had a book providing such excellent treatment and presentation. It talks a lot about each hospital, but also the wider context of their design. It loosely groups the Irish asylums into three main generations.
The first is the early radial corridor plan, often in an X-shape of some kind with a classical clocktower in the middle, and the asylums of this design will form the focus of this report. Part 2 will look at the next general development; the linear corridor plan in the mid-late 19th century. Part 3 will look at the echelon/broad arrow and colony plans of the late 19th and early 20th century, as well as a few later mental hospital developments.
The radial plan was visible in asylums of the early 19th century. The English equivalent would be the few prison-like asylums at Bodmin and Exminster, or Stanley Royd which inspired Scotland’s Murray Royal and Crichton. The book explains how Ireland was a little behind with design, hence why it took longer to progress away from the radial plan compared to England.The aesthetic of the radial plan asylums was of grey classical limestone, with a distinctive central clocktower over the front entrance and administration. The radial design with corridors extending out from its central administration was influenced by the panopticon theory, where all inmates of an institution could be watched via a central ‘all seeing eye’. In reality, it just meant those at the ends of corridors were neglected more and there was little in the way of privacy or humanity.
St. Paul's Roman Catholic Church, Dublin, built 1835-37. It's domed clocktower potentially reflects trends shared with the radial asylums.
St. Joseph’s Hospital - Limerick District Lunatic Asylum
Opened 1827. Main building active with rehabilitation services and some disused blocks.
This one definitely has promise, although it’s less ideal for snooping around being more enclosed in urban surroundings. As Speed said back in 2017, the gate is open in the day so you can just drive in. We had a quick look but it felt fairly twitchy, there’s random signs scattered around saying ‘No photography or filming’. I decided to quickly wander over to one of the disused blocks on the western side, but suddenly a distant man walking a dog headed my way spawned in, and I awkwardly turned and went back to the car. Really it needs scoping out properly, either by someone local or across several visits.
One of the more disused looking blocks
Later concrete water tower
St. Dympna’s Hospital - Carlow District Lunatic Asylum
Opened 1832. Still very much active as a general hospital. It lies upon a large site you can drive onto, with all sorts of services from outpatients and inpatients, physio to A&E and an ambulance yard. It’s definitely showing no signs of slowing down.
Whilst not explorable, we did however take a quick wander in through the front door. Many parts were key fobbed off, but we did manage to see a few nice vaulted ceilings and doorways inside and peek into the 1950s hall addition (used for storage so wasn’t very interesting). The parts we saw were well looked-after, so not the most authentic-feeling although who knows what the upper floors and extremities may hold.
Its corridors were fresh and modern looking on the surface whilst still original in form with vaulted ceilings and glass doors/screens.
Obligatory 'we're just looking for the toilet' selfie
Later corridor alongside recreation hall (left), stairs descending into basement (right).
St. Brigid’s Hospital, Ballinasloe - Connaught District Lunatic Asylum
Opened 1833, extended in 1871 and 1882. Now abandoned, closed 2013.
A modern classic of asylum exploration. We had high hopes for it, and an assumption that it would be relatively easy. However, as with everything, it was not as straightforward as assumed. We arrived at early evening and met @Bugsuperstar, who was also keen to finally make it inside. From the exterior, it is imposing, with a larger clocktower than most of its contemporaries, and an extended X-shape with wider wards at the end of each corridor.
Drone shot by Kismet
Nurses' block
Original chapel - sealed
Getting onto the site was straightforward, but after a thorough stroll round the building, no obvious opening could be found. There was only one viable way to get closer to the centre of the building, which only bought us to more closed windows. However, we did find a rather ominous hole in the ground, where a slab covering the utility tunnels had been shifted. Maybe it was going to be time to finally pop my asylum tunnel cherry. Kismet offered to bravely scout them out, eventually emerging behind a window. Fortunately I had my respirator to hand, but it would do little to ease the claustrophobia of the soggy asbestos hell that followed. Scurrying through the dark as quickly as possible, not wanting to touch the filth that surrounded, nor rush and bump one’s head on the ceiling or pipework, we eventually made it to daylight at the end of a section of the crawlspace. Pulling myself up with great relief, I found myself transported to the asylum kitchen. It was a surreal experience, and not one I’m willing to repeat in a hurry. A thorough shower followed that night, and the impending flu that would give me a sore throat for the rest of the trip was not initially encouraging!
Tunnels now out the way, we'd made it inside and that was all that mattered. Unfortunately, dusk was looming so we only had about an hour before it got a bit too dark to comfortably explore. Nonetheless, although we didn’t get to see everything and the access was grim, it was still the most photogenic place on the list and remains the best properly abandoned asylum in Ireland. The highlights are probably the vaulted corridors with rows of cell doors.
Main kitchen
Some wards contained bits of furniture, although aren't as untouched as they were several years ago.
Continued...
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