TeeJF
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This is one from our June Belgian road trip, sorry it's taken me so damned long to get it posted!
It has been very difficult indeed to find out much about this abandoned hospital in Belgium. It is quite literally attached to a modern development at the north end of the site. The new building, a nursing care home for elderly patients in need of full time medical care, opened in 2010, and is a very large facility with 221 beds. It is therefore only natural to assume, especially in light of the sheer amount of geriatric care equipment we encountered during our exploration, that the abandoned building was also a care facility for the elderly; and indeed that is the case.
But it was not always so.
The first building on the site, from which the geriatric hospital eventually evolved, was a sanatorium built in 1957. The geriatric hospital with more than 180 beds into which it evolved was opened in 1977, the conversion/new build being financed by the local health insurance company. It finally closed its doors once the new development came on stream.
At some time there has been an enormous fire on the first floor which has very badly damaged the ward blocks there and left a visible black wave of smoke along the corridor walls just above head height. A clock on the wall has stopped at 10.14 and one inevitably wonders if that was the time of the big fire. Subsequent to that particular fire moronic elements of society appear to have attempted to set several more fires on the same floor. I say this because there is no evidence of the smaller fires having burnt through the partition walls between rooms as you might expect had the individual fires all been a part of one whole.
Hope you enjoyed the report, thanks for looking!
L'histoire, telle qu'elle est...
It has been very difficult indeed to find out much about this abandoned hospital in Belgium. It is quite literally attached to a modern development at the north end of the site. The new building, a nursing care home for elderly patients in need of full time medical care, opened in 2010, and is a very large facility with 221 beds. It is therefore only natural to assume, especially in light of the sheer amount of geriatric care equipment we encountered during our exploration, that the abandoned building was also a care facility for the elderly; and indeed that is the case.
But it was not always so.
The first building on the site, from which the geriatric hospital eventually evolved, was a sanatorium built in 1957. The geriatric hospital with more than 180 beds into which it evolved was opened in 1977, the conversion/new build being financed by the local health insurance company. It finally closed its doors once the new development came on stream.
At some time there has been an enormous fire on the first floor which has very badly damaged the ward blocks there and left a visible black wave of smoke along the corridor walls just above head height. A clock on the wall has stopped at 10.14 and one inevitably wonders if that was the time of the big fire. Subsequent to that particular fire moronic elements of society appear to have attempted to set several more fires on the same floor. I say this because there is no evidence of the smaller fires having burnt through the partition walls between rooms as you might expect had the individual fires all been a part of one whole.
Les photographies...
The new development is to the left, the abandoned sector to the right.
It takes a wee while for your eyes to adjust to the stygian gloom in the main reception area.
There were several beds and a motley assortment of abandoned care equipment dotted around all over the hospital.
A commode chair.
The grounds are well tended on the new development but within literally a matter of feet they become massively overgrown.
Evidence of occupational therapy or a present for grand-mère from a child?
Just one of many abandoned wheel chairs we saw.
We wandered round the corner in a rather dark corridor and found this room,
a room we will almost all enter feet first one day.
This puts a whole new perspective upon the phrase 'terraced accomodation'!
It's a bit cramped in there!
Belgian hospital stair porn
It's tempting to wonder if the fire which created the waves of smoke blackening upon the walls of this corridor also stopped the clock.
This makes me so bl**dy angry
On the ward...
Did this elderly patient abandon his slippers or was he wheeled out of the ward on a gurney?
One of the better preserved and relatively un-chavved washrooms.
It doesn't take much to visualise how this would have looked when it was a working hospital.
A reception area on the first floor.
Unused sharps and a patient logbook of some sort.
A floor higher still now where we found patient records.
Doctor! Why have I got a small wood growing in my stomach???
...and in my chest too!!!
It's 12 o' clock and time for the Goths to come out to play...
And if this world starts getting you down,
there is room enough for two, up on the roof...
(with apologies to Kenny Lynch
)
Back on the ground floor we saved this wing until last due to its proximity to the live site.
..and we didn't expect to find a complete theatre there!
Far left = active.
Time to exit stage right!
The new development is to the left, the abandoned sector to the right.
It takes a wee while for your eyes to adjust to the stygian gloom in the main reception area.
There were several beds and a motley assortment of abandoned care equipment dotted around all over the hospital.
A commode chair.
The grounds are well tended on the new development but within literally a matter of feet they become massively overgrown.
Evidence of occupational therapy or a present for grand-mère from a child?
Just one of many abandoned wheel chairs we saw.
We wandered round the corner in a rather dark corridor and found this room,
a room we will almost all enter feet first one day.
This puts a whole new perspective upon the phrase 'terraced accomodation'!
It's a bit cramped in there!
Belgian hospital stair porn
It's tempting to wonder if the fire which created the waves of smoke blackening upon the walls of this corridor also stopped the clock.
This makes me so bl**dy angry
On the ward...
Did this elderly patient abandon his slippers or was he wheeled out of the ward on a gurney?
One of the better preserved and relatively un-chavved washrooms.
It doesn't take much to visualise how this would have looked when it was a working hospital.
A reception area on the first floor.
Unused sharps and a patient logbook of some sort.
A floor higher still now where we found patient records.
Doctor! Why have I got a small wood growing in my stomach???
...and in my chest too!!!
It's 12 o' clock and time for the Goths to come out to play...
And if this world starts getting you down,
there is room enough for two, up on the roof...
(with apologies to Kenny Lynch
)
Back on the ground floor we saved this wing until last due to its proximity to the live site.
..and we didn't expect to find a complete theatre there!
Far left = active.
Time to exit stage right!
Hope you enjoyed the report, thanks for looking! 
It's mandatory to be a gimp if you urbex! 
