West Park
Architect William Clifford Smith
Opened 1924
Patients Up to 2045
Closed Mid 1990's
Other The last of the Epsom Cluster to be built
Opened in 1924 it was last of the Epsom Cluster to be built and was named as the 11th London County Asylum.
Today there is a small cottage hospital on the site and the rest remains derelict and abandoned. The most striking building is administration which stands at the front of the complex covered in ivy. The tower although a prominent feature is quite boring at the top!
As you tour the wards it is possible to tell that parts of the hospital closed at differing times, whole buildings were left behind in the various modernisations over the years. In one of these older wards is the Padded cell, tucked away in a corridor off a communal dormitory.
West Park retains a lot of the features that were available to patients who used to reside within the institution such as a dentists and opticians a hairdressers a communal dining hall and even a radio station!
The Main Hall is now a burnt out shell of its former self after suffering an arson attack in 2002. The projection rooms which are attached to the main Hall and used to screen films for patients are still intact and contain the projectors.
West Park is now in the hands of English Partnerships and improved security measures make it quite difficult to get about anymore. There were plans to have a new state of the art hospital on the site, but this was withdrawn and it now seems likely that it will become a housing venture like the rest of the Epsom Cluster.