Report - Severalls Mental Hospital, Colchester - 2015-2023

[Speed]

Thanks for those clarifications, very much a help. Ah nice, which bit is the salon?

You know recently I was watching this excellent 2005 footage of the place from the mechanised site guy, and he comments on how bare the site is. Now days, it seems places are mostly always empty, but compared to the other asylums of the time I can see how it would've seemed barren. I'm more of a space/room rather than detail-orientated person so I don't mind that, but it could've had a bit more in it. West Park (I was too late for) always looked very Severalls-esque but with a lot of furniture left as though people just walked out. Really would donate an organ to have seen that place. Cane Hill though, without having been, I've never quite got what the fuss was about. It looked like it had some excellent specific areas with a few bits left in (the one with the clothing springs to mind), but it looked like a large portion of the building very much fucked.

Cheers! Yeah you've got to love the old school brown NHS signs. The change from brown to blue perfectly suits the perception of having to blend in with quaint old buildings vs the clinical builds of today.

The barbers style sinks are the give away for the salon. That's all that was in there! Very severalls!

West Park actually markedly different I think. A villa style hospital so the exploring was very much more broken up into going in and out of each separate building or ward where as severalls just sprawled. If there was one I'd liken it to it would be Hellingly I guess. Hellingly always felt like it had a bit more to see but a bit more compact.

Thanks for that link. Didn't realise he still existed. That will waste the last few hours at work nicely!

 

[Speed]

Those are pumps too. They would have fed the boilers with water from the tower. That room used to be flooded but you had to climb in through a tiny window up high on one of the windows somwhere and clamber across the pipe work to access the tower back in the day.

 

[JakeV50]

Those pumps look like they may be Glenfield attached to ECC motors.

 

[DustySensorPhotography]

Never actually explored her myself, but I remember reading reports of Severalls right around the time I first began exploring and thinking to myself that it couldn't possibly get better than that!
Incredible comparison between new and old and glad you got to document it so well!

 

[mookster]

It's posts like this that make me really miss the good old days and how much we took places like this for granted.

 

[obscurity]

Cracking report mate. Great to see the place again in such depth. Had a few days sneaking around here back in the day but there was loads missed as all trips were cut short by security.

 

[dansgas1000]

Absolute top-notch stuff as always! Even though there's a lot of info and pics there I don't think you overdid it at all. This is one I missed out on as I only just started out when it started getting converted and demolished, but the comprehensiveness of this report makes it seem as though I have been there today

That was a nice looking pump as well, at least you captured it on the video! Looks similar to the pumps at the Essex station we visited.

 

[Wastelandr]

Top stuff on a very iconic urbex. Great coverage, photos, information and narration. The thrill of Severalls was always a great one. Great to see such a well documented compilation on it. Feature material definitely. 👊

Cheers Jane, good to do justice to an old classic!

 

[Wastelandr]

The barbers style sinks are the give away for the salon. That's all that was in there! Very severalls!

West Park actually markedly different I think. A villa style hospital so the exploring was very much more broken up into going in and out of each separate building or ward where as severalls just sprawled. If there was one I'd liken it to it would be Hellingly I guess. Hellingly always felt like it had a bit more to see but a bit more compact.

Thanks for that link. Didn't realise he still existed. That will waste the last few hours at work nicely!

Ah of course, somehow I didn't expect any furniture to still be in it! I did wonder why the sinks were like that so that explains it.

Ah I see, yeah I suppose the villa layout was pretty unique. The actual style of the architecture looks similar but without having been I'm missing the wider picture.

No probs, yeah it's a great video, pretty good footage for 2005 too. Think he only put it up fairly recently.

Those are pumps too. They would have fed the boilers with water from the tower. That room used to be flooded but you had to climb in through a tiny window up high on one of the windows somwhere and clamber across the pipe work to access the tower back in the day.

This seems to be exactly what happens in the video haha

Never actually explored her myself, but I remember reading reports of Severalls right around the time I first began exploring and thinking to myself that it couldn't possibly get better than that!
Incredible comparison between new and old and glad you got to document it so well!

Same here, I'm glad I caught the tail end of that pre-social media era of urbex even if I was still warming up to it. Everything certainly seemed bigger and better judging by the forums, although could've been the fact I was only 14 when I started out. I probably would never have seen Sevs if it wasn't for my mate organising this. Cheers!

It's posts like this that make me really miss the good old days and how much we took places like this for granted.

Deep but true I was saying at the weekend how nice it'd be to just be like 'lets spend all day at Sevs' rather than lets travel 2 hours for some mediocre derp. Glad it's brought some nostalgia back though.

Cracking report mate. Great to see the place again in such depth. Had a few days sneaking around here back in the day but there was loads missed as all trips were cut short by security.

Cheers mate glad you liked! Michael must've been excellent, I swear the majority of reports on here end with getting caught

Absolute top-notch stuff as always! Even though there's a lot of info and pics there I don't think you overdid it at all. This is one I missed out on as I only just started out when it started getting converted and demolished, but the comprehensiveness of this report makes it seem as though I have been there today

That was a nice looking pump as well, at least you captured it on the video! Looks similar to the pumps at the Essex station we visited.

Cheers dude! Yeah unfortunately you weren't far off. Thorpe St. Andews looked like it would've been brill originally too. Funnily enough, I think I've got my bearings around the site only now looking back at pics and footage. At the time of visiting, I had no clue where I was lol. Yeah I was thinking it looked similar to those pumps, not too far away either!

 

[Julesmac82]

We was too late for this one was absolutely gutted when we turned up to find houses built on the land brilliant photos to keep its memory alive we got this one of the water tower
JJ’s explorer’s

 

[Wastelandr]

We was too late for this one was absolutely gutted when we turned up to find houses built on the land brilliant photos to keep its memory alive we got this one of the water tower
JJ’s explorer’s

You're only about 5 years too late, as mentioned everywhere on the internet and in this report with pictures of the modern conversions . Glad you added a pic of the information sign, that was the one thing I didn't include. It's good they have at least commemorated it's history.

 

[Julesmac82]

You're only about 5 years too late, as mentioned everywhere on the internet and in this report with pictures of the modern conversions . Glad you added a pic of the information sign, that was the one thing I didn't include. It's good they have at least commemorated it's history.

Only just found this page kinda newish to this lol your pictures were absolutely amazing tho

 

[Wastelandr]

Only just found this page kinda newish to this lol your pictures were absolutely amazing tho

Cheers! There's a few left worth seeing but sadly none in Essex