# Green Lodge Naturopathic Centre – Halstead – Oct 2016



## mockney reject (Nov 20, 2016)

The History

Now here’s what I know

There is very little information available with regards to this place. I believe it may at one time been a part of the nearby Attwood’s Manor care home and then became the Green Lodge Naturopathic Centre. Although it appears to share land with Attwood’s it looks as though it may have once had its own grand entrance and drive way. According to the flyer pictured below it is located in 27 acres of beautiful Essex countryside and was a “perfect peaceful retreat”. 

I know from the date on the outside of the building it was built in 1872 but other than this I’m at a loss
If anyone else knows or finds anything else it would be much appreciated

The explore

Out on a Saturday morning with a non-member and hooked up with @stumblinmonkey headed over to Halstead to have a look at this. A customer at work had told me about an old house her daughter and her mates hang out in sometimes, so we decided to pay it a visit. 

I had already had a look on google earth and had a rough idea of the location so knew where it was and what to look for.

We parked up and found what looked like it was the original main gate and walked through the trees along what was the driveway up to what we thought was our target. A little building with not a lot in it and not overly impressive and to be honest a bit of a let-down….




























But as we came out of the end of this building we saw what we were really after and fuck was it nice.
The front was showing signs of vandalism with smashed windows etc. The first room we made our way into was some kind of day room with glass windows along one side and looked as though it could have been quite fancy in its heyday.

Then we hit a stumbling block as the doors into the main building were all nailed shut. Bugger
We found another entry into the main building via a window and in we went.
Well what can I say, this place kept on giving, from the nice staircase as we went in to the corridors, the odd “sun lamp” the numerous old chairs and wheelchairs scattered about and various other signs of what was a nice place one day.

Then one of us wandered into a room full of junk. The walls were tiled and on each end of the wall was a no diving sign. This was a little odd and maybe a practical joke or something weird. But low and behold after moving some of the junk we realised we were indeed standing on a swimming pool that had been covered over!!

What the actual fuck? Why would you do such a thing?

I think if we had had more bodies we may have had a go at uncovering it, but we were a little over looked by the back of Attwood’s manor as you can see in the pics.
Well that was a little exciting but there was more to come, we climbed a staircase and the back of the “pool room” and had another oh my moment as we stumbled across what the sign on the door told us was the “conference and Tai-chi room” must have made those stressful meeting a little interesting.

We opened the door to the room and gave a collective “oh fuck“ as we saw the ceiling and a virtually mint and stunning room. After having a bit of a rest in this room we went on and found a few other odd rooms including the herb room… 

This then led us back down to where we had entered so we left and headed into the surrounding grounds to find something else that I had spotted on google earth, bloody handy that app. Well it looked from the air to be some kind of pond. Well as we got closer we think what we found had been some kind of large hot tub or external covered pool. The roof was missing but the base was still there. But what was next to it was also a little weird. A large pill box, but sunk into the ground, I can only assume that maybe it was above ground once and had either sunk or the ground around it had been built up. However it was flooded and we had no 
chance of getting in. 

At this point it was getting late I was supposed to be elsewhere so we said goodbye and headed our separate ways

As always enjoy the pics


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## Dirus_Strictus (Nov 20, 2016)

Re the 'covering of the swimming pool'

Very common at one time in locations such as this, hotels and the like. 1/ Keeps the heat in and the crap out of the water. 2/ Where the cover is substantial and load bearing, allows the room containing the pool to be multi functional. 3/ Stops improper use of the facility by drunken guests - rather difficult to remove these if you are plastered!

Very nice set of images, very good report and good info on this place.


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## mockney reject (Nov 20, 2016)

The pool was cover with thick sheets of ply with a substantial frame supporting it. From what i could tell it was fixed and not meant to be moved.

Looks like it was covered when the room was used as storage


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## Sam Haltin (Nov 20, 2016)

Nice photographs. They left a lot of stuff behind, I'm sure that a charity shop would be happy to take some of this. Some of the rooms could do with a tidy-up. The best room is as you say the one with the ornate roof.


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## flyboys90 (Nov 21, 2016)

Great find.Thanks for sharing


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## bouncy (Nov 24, 2016)

Hi there I'm a member of this group and I also work here. Please could I start off by asking if you could tell your customers daughter and friends to stop smashing the windows and trying to kick in the boards I have put up. Green lodge and the 5 bed bungalow are owned by attwoods and greenlodge used to be the old coach house for attwoods manor. The things that look like pill boxes was the start of a project of a underground building with a underground tunnel linking it to green lodge. I have the architects drawings for this and will post when I get a chance for you to see.


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## bouncy (Nov 24, 2016)

You must have done this a while ago as the wood paneling on the changing rooms have gone


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## HughieD (Nov 24, 2016)

That's one helluva of a find Mockney!


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## mockney reject (Nov 27, 2016)

bouncy said:


> Hi there I'm a member of this group and I also work here. Please could I start off by asking if you could tell your customers daughter and friends to stop smashing the windows and trying to kick in the boards I have put up. Green lodge and the 5 bed bungalow are owned by attwoods and greenlodge used to be the old coach house for attwoods manor. The things that look like pill boxes was the start of a project of a underground building with a underground tunnel linking it to green lodge. I have the architects drawings for this and will post when I get a chance for you to see.




So whats the story with it?

Why is such a stunning place being left to rot?


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## bouncy (Nov 28, 2016)

The people that was running green lodge a building the new underground building got into a lot of money problems and done a runner over night, all the land and property is owned by a group of bankers but they will not invest in it.
Greenlodge is now our store room hence all the wheel chairs, zimmer frame etc


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## Jamiel1979 (Dec 4, 2016)

How long ago did Green Lodge close Bouncy?


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## bouncy (Dec 4, 2016)

I don't know for definite but I think around 1995


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