# Stone House Hospital, September 2010



## tom46 (Sep 21, 2010)

Some history nicked from the fantastic County Asylums website:



> History:
> Constructed following the Commissioners of Lunacy's insistence that the city of London provided its own asylum for pauper lunatics, who had previously been sent to Bethlem Asylum in Lambeth. The Commissioners discouraged the use of voluntary asylums for pauper patients and despite the low number of such patients in the City area, a site at Stone, near Dartford was purchased and the building erected for 220 patients. Declining numbers of pauper admissions led to excess space being used to take out of area cases and later private, fee paying patients (from 1892). The renumerative nature of this work allowed further additions around the turn of the century.
> From 1924 the asylum was renamed the City of London Mental Hospital, then later became Stone House hospital on transferral to the National Health Service in 1948. Prior to transferral to NHS over half of the population of nearly 600, were private patients. Only 50 patients were actually from the City of London , with the remainder coming from other authorities. The hospital catchment area later took in local patients, from Dartford and Gravesend districts. In the late 1980's the grounds to the north east of the site alongside Bow Arrow Lane were developed as Learning disabilities villas to accelerate the closure of the nearby Darenth Park Hospital.
> Site development:
> The original asylum building comprised of the administration building to the north, with workshops, boiler house and main stores to the west, and laundry and sewing room to the east to the east. The south front was occupied by the recreation hall combined with chapel above, flanked by male and female ward blocks. Between the administration block and hall stands the prominent round water tower. The hospital cemetery was located on the north side of Bow Arrow Lane . Later additions included an isolation hospital (known as the cottage hospital) at the corner of Cotton and Bow Arrow Lanes, followed by a new detached chapel opposite the admin block consecrated in May 1901. Further additions consisted of enlarged laundry and workshop developments combined with a laundry workers block all on the west side of the main complex. Two single storey sick and infirm wards were also built at either end of the South frontage. A nurses accommodation block was added during 1909-10. Close to this, further staff accommodation was constructed around 1975.



This was a fantastic explore. Beatiful buildings, massive site, pretty much mint apart from the pigeons that have got into the upper hall, and a very tantalizing church into which we could not find access.

Access here was a great deal of fun, and despite appearances this was actually a relaxed explore. Visted with Kent-Urbex and Begood, both of whom have pics to come. Snapped these on a gnarled old Canon T90.

(After this we trundled off to Runwell, a trip which was cut short. A word to the wise, have your wits about you there!)










































Thanks for looking and thanks a lot guys for a good trip. And giving me a hand with my useless climbing.


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## BeGood (Sep 22, 2010)

Good work, mate! You got those developed quick. 

I've posted my Runwell report (http://tinyurl.com/36ofrns) but I didn't get a great deal of photos that I liked from there.

No worries on the climbing front! I'm hardly Spiderman either, I think we have to give pretty much 100% of the credit to Kent-Urbex (we should also give a small percentage to the humble stick that aided us, the same one that helped me on my first visit).

Here's a few of my photos:


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## Kent-urbex (Sep 23, 2010)

we all have diffrent shots for once here are a few of mine:

1





2





3





4


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## RichardH (Sep 23, 2010)

_Two_ pianos? :huh:

They'll probably start breeding. Very hard to eradicate a nest of feral pianos once it gets established.

(eta: That photo of the decaying latex glove is grotesque. Wonderful )


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## lost (Sep 24, 2010)

Nice work, this place seems to be pretty overlooked. Is it because it's pretty dull internally apart from the main hall?


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## its my destiny (Sep 24, 2010)

great report i enjoyed reading and loved the photos great work


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## sqwasher (Sep 24, 2010)

Nice bunch of photies chaps, not seen this much so well done.


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## BeGood (Sep 24, 2010)

lost - it is a bit stripped, and the main halls are certainly the highlights, but there are older bits and quite a lot of character in the place really. It is a bit of a swine to get into, that is certainly a factor in it being under-reported. I would totally recommend it as an explore.


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