The Lawn Hospital/Lincoln Lunatic Asylum - August 2016
The Hospital was founded in 1819 as the Lincoln Lunatic Asylum, with the costs raised by subscription. The appeal was organised by a committee presided over by Lord Yarborough and including the Bishop of Lincoln, Earl Brownlow and three MPs. Subscribers were predominantly from the nobility, gentry and clergy of the county.
The original constitution stated that patients were to be treated “with all the tenderness and indulgence compatible with the steady and effectual government of them and every occupation which may divert the mind, win the attention and awaken the affections be cheerfully and readily promoted.†Patients were to be “persons of the superior class who shall contribute to the general expense of the establishment according to their ability and persons in more limited circumstances whose payments shall be relieved, when opportunity may offer, out of the disposable funds of the charity.â€
Some well dressed Georgian patients in the mid 1800's..
The hospital is significant in the history of the treatment of mental illness for the pioneering work carried out on the abolition of mechanical restraint and isolation, particularly under Dr EP Charlesworth (1783-1853) and Dr RG Hill (1811-1878). Their enlightened methods were gradually adopted by other asylums. Early work was also carried out on the classification of patients according to the state of their health. Entertainment formed an important aspect of treatment, and board games and popular magazines were purchased for use by the patients.
Following the opening of the County Lunatic Asylum at Bracebridge Heath in 1852 (St John's), there was an increasing emphasis on fee-paying patients. The Asylum was re-named as The Lawn Hospital for the Insane in 1885. The Hospital was taken over by the National Health Service in 1948 and was finally closed in 1985. Stokes Coffee were the preferred bidder in 2012 when the building received offers...
Although listed as "converted" on most websites (and quite rightly so) it lay empty for 4 years and Lincoln City Council decided they no longer had a use for the premises.
1.
I'll be honest, it was a long time after the council ditched it that we noticed that it was empty again. It took quite a while for Stokes to complete the purchase of the site and stories started appearing in the news again. Myself and @Urbexbandoned went up there on a particularly busy weekend where loads of people dress up as leather-clad buckled-boot wearing weird humans and from what I can gather it's generally a fancy dress piss-up. "Steam-punk" festival or something, bizarre.
We walked around the 'hospital' for the umpteenth time and saw two blokes, one in a suit, and one looking like a workman entering the back of the building, they walked in, left the door open, and disappeared. Shitloads of people around but we lingered around and thought fuck it...
If we had went left through that door on the right of the last image it would've led through the kitchens to a staircase right up to the main hall but sods law (me) sent us to the right and up to a series of empty offices and though a bit of a maze up to the front part of the building.
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Lots of pristine rooms, nicely hoovered but with totally shite light fittings, ruining the semi-original roses..
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7.
Some kind of meeting/board room up the upper floor.
A picture I found online as to what Stokes have done with it..
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Couple of rooms with nice curved walls..
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About 2 mins after I took this photo it all got very noisy..
Directly behind me when I took this picture there was a door with "managers office" or something like that on a wooden plaque which caught my eye. I decided to have a quick look before going to get some better shots of that entrance staircase. I slowly opened the door, poked my head in, and could see a nice looking old black safe on the back wall. I whispered back to Tracey to come and have a look, then stepped into the room when she got to the door. A split second later I heard the familiar 'plink' of an old style P.I.R. and glanced up into the corner to see the little sensor illuminated. Then the alarms sounded and it was fucking loud.
The biggest problem was trying to navigate to an exit as the route to this point was bit of a maze. We also knew that there was in-house secca diagonally below us so didn't want to be pegging it across the floor above them. I headed for an internal stairwell which hit floor level conveniently close to a push bar fire escape which looked like it hadn't been opened in a very long time. At this point I wasn't sure what was on the other side, and I didn't particularly want to burst out the door into some steampunk festival stall or something so I peeked through the keyhole just in time to see a secca man hurriedly grabbing a hi-viz from his car (the silver vectra shown outside his office in Picture 1 above). We'd have ran straight out in front of him if we hadn't paused for a second. We calmly walked out and I noticed the door hadn't closed properly behind us. Re-visit was on!
12.
The exit door, which by chance I had taken a pic of earlier in the day because I liked it.
We retreated to a safe distance, but still in the grounds, and the alarms kept sounding for ages. There were so many people around that it was easy to blend back into the crowd, even though most were all dressed like they were, there were still some normal people milling around. After walking back around to the original entry point we noticed that the door was closed again and I can only assume that the two blokes that left it open earlier had left and set the alarms behind them.
We decided to come back later about midnight and check if the fire exit was still open and although it was, there seemed to be a constant stream of people wandering around the grounds pissed up and generally getting in the way. When we returned in the morning the place was deserted but the door was annoyingly locked again, and after many strolls around the place was locked up tight again, alarm keypads lit up again and assumedly armed. We had covered a considerable amount of the place the day before but we were cheesed off at the prospect of not seeing the main hall/ballroom before Stokes began the conversion.
We considered our options and after a bit of research we came to the conclusion that the only way to see the rest of the place would be to contact Stokes and see if we could blag it. Personally, my opinion on gaining permission to enter somewhere can be done by any mong with the ability to send an email or make a phone call, and I avoid it like the plague, but on this occasion I knew that planning permission had already been granted for the conversion/renovation and it would probably be the last chance to have a look at the parts we hadn't seen for the foreseeable future. The next day we met up with some kind of foreman, who as it turned out was very aware of the history of the place and was genuinely interested in the buildings preservation. He walked us around areas which, unknown to him, we had already explored properly the day before but we acted like it was the first time we had seen it, and merely waited to get to the hall...
13.
I can't remember the exact details, but I think this area was partially set-up as a visitor wing when Lincolnshire council owned the place, but it had a nice feel to it with the old doors/locks and square observation windows..
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Pictures from this area are a bit ropey, I realised about 10 mins later that I'd left my lens on Manual Focus but it was too late to go back and re-take them after we'd moved on..
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Another quick shot of where it all went wrong before..
19.
Continued..
The Hospital was founded in 1819 as the Lincoln Lunatic Asylum, with the costs raised by subscription. The appeal was organised by a committee presided over by Lord Yarborough and including the Bishop of Lincoln, Earl Brownlow and three MPs. Subscribers were predominantly from the nobility, gentry and clergy of the county.
The original constitution stated that patients were to be treated “with all the tenderness and indulgence compatible with the steady and effectual government of them and every occupation which may divert the mind, win the attention and awaken the affections be cheerfully and readily promoted.†Patients were to be “persons of the superior class who shall contribute to the general expense of the establishment according to their ability and persons in more limited circumstances whose payments shall be relieved, when opportunity may offer, out of the disposable funds of the charity.â€
Some well dressed Georgian patients in the mid 1800's..
The hospital is significant in the history of the treatment of mental illness for the pioneering work carried out on the abolition of mechanical restraint and isolation, particularly under Dr EP Charlesworth (1783-1853) and Dr RG Hill (1811-1878). Their enlightened methods were gradually adopted by other asylums. Early work was also carried out on the classification of patients according to the state of their health. Entertainment formed an important aspect of treatment, and board games and popular magazines were purchased for use by the patients.
Following the opening of the County Lunatic Asylum at Bracebridge Heath in 1852 (St John's), there was an increasing emphasis on fee-paying patients. The Asylum was re-named as The Lawn Hospital for the Insane in 1885. The Hospital was taken over by the National Health Service in 1948 and was finally closed in 1985. Stokes Coffee were the preferred bidder in 2012 when the building received offers...
Although listed as "converted" on most websites (and quite rightly so) it lay empty for 4 years and Lincoln City Council decided they no longer had a use for the premises.
1.
I'll be honest, it was a long time after the council ditched it that we noticed that it was empty again. It took quite a while for Stokes to complete the purchase of the site and stories started appearing in the news again. Myself and @Urbexbandoned went up there on a particularly busy weekend where loads of people dress up as leather-clad buckled-boot wearing weird humans and from what I can gather it's generally a fancy dress piss-up. "Steam-punk" festival or something, bizarre.
We walked around the 'hospital' for the umpteenth time and saw two blokes, one in a suit, and one looking like a workman entering the back of the building, they walked in, left the door open, and disappeared. Shitloads of people around but we lingered around and thought fuck it...
If we had went left through that door on the right of the last image it would've led through the kitchens to a staircase right up to the main hall but sods law (me) sent us to the right and up to a series of empty offices and though a bit of a maze up to the front part of the building.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Lots of pristine rooms, nicely hoovered but with totally shite light fittings, ruining the semi-original roses..
6.
7.
Some kind of meeting/board room up the upper floor.
A picture I found online as to what Stokes have done with it..
8.
9.
Couple of rooms with nice curved walls..
10.
11.
About 2 mins after I took this photo it all got very noisy..
Directly behind me when I took this picture there was a door with "managers office" or something like that on a wooden plaque which caught my eye. I decided to have a quick look before going to get some better shots of that entrance staircase. I slowly opened the door, poked my head in, and could see a nice looking old black safe on the back wall. I whispered back to Tracey to come and have a look, then stepped into the room when she got to the door. A split second later I heard the familiar 'plink' of an old style P.I.R. and glanced up into the corner to see the little sensor illuminated. Then the alarms sounded and it was fucking loud.
The biggest problem was trying to navigate to an exit as the route to this point was bit of a maze. We also knew that there was in-house secca diagonally below us so didn't want to be pegging it across the floor above them. I headed for an internal stairwell which hit floor level conveniently close to a push bar fire escape which looked like it hadn't been opened in a very long time. At this point I wasn't sure what was on the other side, and I didn't particularly want to burst out the door into some steampunk festival stall or something so I peeked through the keyhole just in time to see a secca man hurriedly grabbing a hi-viz from his car (the silver vectra shown outside his office in Picture 1 above). We'd have ran straight out in front of him if we hadn't paused for a second. We calmly walked out and I noticed the door hadn't closed properly behind us. Re-visit was on!
12.
The exit door, which by chance I had taken a pic of earlier in the day because I liked it.
We retreated to a safe distance, but still in the grounds, and the alarms kept sounding for ages. There were so many people around that it was easy to blend back into the crowd, even though most were all dressed like they were, there were still some normal people milling around. After walking back around to the original entry point we noticed that the door was closed again and I can only assume that the two blokes that left it open earlier had left and set the alarms behind them.
We decided to come back later about midnight and check if the fire exit was still open and although it was, there seemed to be a constant stream of people wandering around the grounds pissed up and generally getting in the way. When we returned in the morning the place was deserted but the door was annoyingly locked again, and after many strolls around the place was locked up tight again, alarm keypads lit up again and assumedly armed. We had covered a considerable amount of the place the day before but we were cheesed off at the prospect of not seeing the main hall/ballroom before Stokes began the conversion.
We considered our options and after a bit of research we came to the conclusion that the only way to see the rest of the place would be to contact Stokes and see if we could blag it. Personally, my opinion on gaining permission to enter somewhere can be done by any mong with the ability to send an email or make a phone call, and I avoid it like the plague, but on this occasion I knew that planning permission had already been granted for the conversion/renovation and it would probably be the last chance to have a look at the parts we hadn't seen for the foreseeable future. The next day we met up with some kind of foreman, who as it turned out was very aware of the history of the place and was genuinely interested in the buildings preservation. He walked us around areas which, unknown to him, we had already explored properly the day before but we acted like it was the first time we had seen it, and merely waited to get to the hall...
13.
I can't remember the exact details, but I think this area was partially set-up as a visitor wing when Lincolnshire council owned the place, but it had a nice feel to it with the old doors/locks and square observation windows..
14.
15.
Pictures from this area are a bit ropey, I realised about 10 mins later that I'd left my lens on Manual Focus but it was too late to go back and re-take them after we'd moved on..
16.
17.
18.
Another quick shot of where it all went wrong before..
19.
Continued..
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