St Bartholomew's hospital History:
St Bartholomew's hospital is the oldest hospital in England until closing in September.Founded in 1078 for the care of the poor and lepers, but now used for Today it is a nurse-led hospital run by Medway Community Health Care, providing specialist rehabilitation to people living in Medway and Swale but now looks after patients who have had a stroke, a fall or major surgery and provides physiotherapy, occupational therapy and nursing care to help them to recover and return home to live as independently as possible.
But the current hospital building dates back to 1861 and Medway Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), who commission the services, said it is no longer suitable. The site is owned by NHS Property Services. St Bartholomew’s Hospital is to be sold for redevelopment but parts of the building including the mortuary will be retained as it is listed like other parts of the main hospital.
The explore:
After being texted asking if we wanted to explore on Sunday we arranged to meet. Being told we were going to see the morgue and hospital I couldn't wait to loose my morgue virginity. We turned up to a building I can only describe as White Castle from Harold and Kumar.
But it was much better than that it was the morgue. Once we negotiated getting in we were greeted by the slab. It was amazing first thing was to take as many pictures as possible. And we all wanted to sit on it and spin it round like you do. Once pictured looking on closer inspection the drain was full of human hair which was creepy.
Then as we ventured further a very loud alarm started to scream. But we just carried on taking our pictures and then left it was a shame we didn't have longer in here but it was worth the drive just to see the slab in the flesh. Then onto the main hospital, the sheer size of it was daunting.
As we found our way in we came across more cameras and alarms. We decided the security had already seen us so we might as well take a look around. We got most of the way around the hospital taking our pictures. Setting numerous alarms of but just trying to ignore them. We came across two rooms that were possibly the prayer rooms. With religious Muriel's on the wall this was probably the best part of the hospital building as it had been mainly stripped of everything inside.
The building itself was huge and like a maze but we decided we wanted to find the tower, after some time we came across a window onto the roof and then found the tower. By this point the security had turned up for us. As we decided to sit on the roof and catch some rays.
We waited and waited until we saw the security guard accompanied by a police officer we gave them a wave and climbed back in and gave ourselves up. It was the usual questions and searches, then we started chatting to the officer who was a great bloke. But we had to wait until the security had got through to the office to see what they wanted to do with us.
After being walked out of the hospital we were told that they wanted to prosecute us. After at least a couple of hours waiting while the officer spoke to them on the phone telling them we hadn't done anything wrong they finally let us go. And gave us a lift back to the car. Awsome day shame we got caught!