I saw this crop up on here a few weeks back and thought the decaying shell of a building looked right up my street. It was pretty local to me as well considering I class anywhere within an hour of Oxford as 'local' owing to the lack of stuff in my home city.
The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore near Harrow has a LOT of history behind it. The hospital opened in 1922 after the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital on London's Portland Street decided to open a second site (referred to as the 'Country Branch' rather than the 'Town Branch' in London), the at-the-time vacant Mary Wardell Convalescent Home was chosen as a suitable location. By 1923 around 100 patients were housed at Stanmore, mostly suffering long cases of Tuberculosis so requiring, such was the medical thought at the time, long periods of convalescence in the fresh open air. The hospital expanded it's services in the following decades and grew into a large institution in it's own right. In the present day it's a large, modern facility undergoing a huge amount of redevelopment, a lot of the older buildings have been demolished or renovated but there are a few yet to meet the chopping block. One of them is the Zachary Merton Building, a convalescent ward opened in 1936 with 44 beds. It was originally only called the Convalescent Ward however in 1961 was renamed the Zachary Merton Ward, in honour of the trust by the same name. In the late 1970s the kitchens and offices of the building were adapted for use by the Scoliosis Unit. In 1982 the hospital came under control of the Bloomsbury Health Authority following a major NHS reorganisation. Up until this point children, following operations, had been ferried from the main site to the Zachary Merton Ward by a towed ambulance, however when the rear axle of the last operational ambulance broke, Bloomsbury Health Authority refused to pay for a repair or replacement and following that, the Zachary Merton Ward closed. I can't find an exact date of closure but my guess is somewhere around the mid-1980s.
To say this place is falling apart is the understatement of the decade. Everything wood has completely rotted out, door frames, window frames pretty much the whole lot. Thankfully the ground floor is concrete, the first floor appears to be largely concrete however it isn't entirely so, and as such is incredibly sketchy. There are three or four rooms filled with old redundant hospital furniture and equipment, all mouldy and damp and rotten, as well as a room stuffed full of paperwork from medical equipment suppliers. It's the most rotten hospital I've found myself in since the dry rot hellfest that was Hawick Cottage Hospital, however I loved it in here as this level of decay is what I'm a huge fan of photographing, it's just a shame there isn't more natural light inside. There's something about this building which feels like it's lost in time, like it's a flashback to the 'old days' of abandoned hospitals which closed in the 1980s/1990s of which there are very very few left now.
Thanks for looking
The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore near Harrow has a LOT of history behind it. The hospital opened in 1922 after the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital on London's Portland Street decided to open a second site (referred to as the 'Country Branch' rather than the 'Town Branch' in London), the at-the-time vacant Mary Wardell Convalescent Home was chosen as a suitable location. By 1923 around 100 patients were housed at Stanmore, mostly suffering long cases of Tuberculosis so requiring, such was the medical thought at the time, long periods of convalescence in the fresh open air. The hospital expanded it's services in the following decades and grew into a large institution in it's own right. In the present day it's a large, modern facility undergoing a huge amount of redevelopment, a lot of the older buildings have been demolished or renovated but there are a few yet to meet the chopping block. One of them is the Zachary Merton Building, a convalescent ward opened in 1936 with 44 beds. It was originally only called the Convalescent Ward however in 1961 was renamed the Zachary Merton Ward, in honour of the trust by the same name. In the late 1970s the kitchens and offices of the building were adapted for use by the Scoliosis Unit. In 1982 the hospital came under control of the Bloomsbury Health Authority following a major NHS reorganisation. Up until this point children, following operations, had been ferried from the main site to the Zachary Merton Ward by a towed ambulance, however when the rear axle of the last operational ambulance broke, Bloomsbury Health Authority refused to pay for a repair or replacement and following that, the Zachary Merton Ward closed. I can't find an exact date of closure but my guess is somewhere around the mid-1980s.
To say this place is falling apart is the understatement of the decade. Everything wood has completely rotted out, door frames, window frames pretty much the whole lot. Thankfully the ground floor is concrete, the first floor appears to be largely concrete however it isn't entirely so, and as such is incredibly sketchy. There are three or four rooms filled with old redundant hospital furniture and equipment, all mouldy and damp and rotten, as well as a room stuffed full of paperwork from medical equipment suppliers. It's the most rotten hospital I've found myself in since the dry rot hellfest that was Hawick Cottage Hospital, however I loved it in here as this level of decay is what I'm a huge fan of photographing, it's just a shame there isn't more natural light inside. There's something about this building which feels like it's lost in time, like it's a flashback to the 'old days' of abandoned hospitals which closed in the 1980s/1990s of which there are very very few left now.
Thanks for looking
