Visit Date May2005 / Dec 2005 / Mar 2006 / Oct 2006
Cane Hill
Architect C.H. Howell
Opened 1883
Patients Over 2000 at one point?
Closed 1991
Other The most infamous English asylum
Fairmile was also designed by C.H. Howell although the architectural styles are totally different.
Cane Hill asylum is probably on of the most documented of any of the English Asylums and quite rightly so! Not only is the place HUGE but a lot of the features are still within. Unlike Severalls which has been totally stripped of anything that would belong in a hospital, Cane Hill has it all still in situ.
There is a 10 foot fence which surrounds most of the buildings and recently
security patrols have been stepped up after the former hospital passed into the hands of English Partnerships, which is a Brownfield regeneration scheme set up by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Also in the last few weeks internal barriers have been put into the corridors to try and stop the influx of vandals.
The Main Hall, fire station and Vincent Vanburg ward have all suffered at the hands of arsonists. But there is still so much to see. The Chapel has to be the biggest and best one which I have seen in an asylum complex, it really is awe inspiring.
The mortuary still has within it the boots and coats of the people who worked there and the mechanism for loading and unloading bodies from the freezers still works!
The Laundry area is a place I really like, the size of the washers and the dryers really make you see how many people that used to live there.
A lot of the wards still have beds and bedding within them and the nurses training area still has parts of manuals and training aids scattered among dead pigeons that somehow have not managed to make it out of the multitudes of broken windows!
The art room is still full of the art which was done by patients as therapy. Something that I have never seen anywhere else.
My trip just before Christmas may be the last chance that I have to see this wonderful place, as groundwork on the surrounding shrub land is now taking place and the newer secure unit which is on the site is due to close. Surely it can only be a matter of time before internal work starts and even worse the whole or partial demolition to make way for little box houses.