Newcastle General Hospital Admin Block and A&E Block
Back in 2011 we visited the Newcastle A & E Department block on a couple of occasions when it recently closed and all A & E admissions were transferred to the newer RVI hospital. Both visits were quite short due to it being adjacent to the live hospital and the fact that it was alarmed and PIR'd to the rafters... I remember having to run out through to the live bit, with a security guard in hot pursuit.. fun times. The second visit was just as tense as you could barely move in that place for PIR's everywhere, directly connected to the on site security who were pretty much on the scene in seconds.
We always wanted to return to the place to try and crack the Admin and old Workhouse block, which was at the front just off the Westgate Road entrance to the site but we never seemed to get around to it and I settled for just posting up a mini-report of the A&E Dept.
Fast forward 7 years and a conversation about the A&E building and its possible current stance, we remembered we never got around to checking the Admin block as it looked beautiful on the outside but knew it wouldnt be an easy feat with the entire place alarmed. After a quick search on 28 and finding that no-one had decided to venture in throughout the 7 years it had been standing there, i thought it would be a shame to let this one go without at least documenting its current status regardless of whatever condition it would now be like inside.
Cue various trips, the usual google mappage and i finally stumbled upon what could be possible access, but would be difficult due to the area it was in, the security patrol route and the fact it was a little high up. A few plans were made, lots of money spent on phone calls, work hours lost due to the case of "Hi, ive got an idea.... how about approaching it from such-and-such..." then "no that wouldnt work... back to the drawing board..." then eventually I had a plan that wasnt entirely foolproof by a long shot, but it was our only option.
To be honest, after all the effort, I was disappointed in the state of the place inside, with it being Admin i was expecting a lot more original features, and in the 7 years it had been closed it really had deteriorated. No evidence of "chavs" being in, so i can assume it is natural decay mixed with contractors stripping it. The floors were surprisingly dodgy after such a short few years of it being closed and we did have a couple of close calls, myself nearly falling through a floor to 18 foot below (thanks Stranton for hauling me out when i was dangling up to my waist and clinging onto a radiator trying to get a grip back up!). A lot of the areas were padlocked off, including the wards at the north end so we were limited in what we could access.
Future of the Admin / Workhouse block is demolition, which from the outside seems to be a shame, but once your inside you can kind of understand why. Future of the A&E block is the same, and talks from Newcastle Council of building a Texco's on the site were disputed, so the buildings remain standing and derelict.
We also revisited the A & E block at a later date to see its current state and as we thought, it had changed a bit and was more stripped out than before, but still made for a nice wander... I did make a beeline for those windows that i remembered from the previous trip back in 2011, which was probably its best feature. So after a couple of visits to both buildings, i thought i would do a combined report of them both. Visited with Stranton, cheers mate, was a great team effort this one and thanks for help with THAT gate which i fortunately escaped unscathed but with my poor jacket ripped to shreds! God knows what the staff at an all night cafe must have thought when we wandered in for coffees afterwards. :-)
Cheers,
Cat
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