- Joined
- Jun 12, 2011
- Messages
- 864
- Reaction score
- 2,093
One of my favourite haunts....A tad harder to get in than a few years ago but still a really enjoyable wander and i always see something ive never seen before...As nature reclaims her and builders demolish her she still stands tall amongst the Black mountains..but for how long ..who knows.
The is a guard dog on site and not a very nice man prowling around constantly watching the place for the developes.
Abandoned in the Black Mountains of Wales, Talgarth Asylum oozes character and atmosphere. But the ornate stonework and boarded-up windows are a bleak reminder of a time when care of the mentally ill was more about longterm isolation and crude experimental techniques than progressive therapy.Located near a small town of the same name, Talgarth Asylum was built in 1903 to house 352 patients. Originally called the Brecon and Radnor Joint Asylum, it became the Mid Wales Hospital in 1921 and was built in an echelon, or “compact arrow”, style, allowing for quick movement between any two points of the 200,000 square foot hospital.Patient numbers were bolstered by military personnel during World War One, many suffering from shell shock, while World War Two brought both psychiatric patients and prisoners of war. Severe overcrowding led to the construction of two additional wards by 1955 and a new treatment block was in place a decade later. But despite the old insane asylum’s passage into the era of modern medicine by the latter decades of the 20th century, new health legislation led to Talgarth Asylum’s closure by the mid 1990s.The 43 acre site, which includes extensive hospital buildings, five large family houses, a tennis court, cricket pitch and chapel, was reportedly disposed of several years ago in a controversial sale for around £355,000. Since then, the buildings have fallen into abandonment with signs of demolition across the site. But the remaining buildings, with their period charm coupled with a grim institutional reality, are a foreboding reminder of the history of Talgarth Asylum and other mental institutions of its era.
The is a guard dog on site and not a very nice man prowling around constantly watching the place for the developes.
Abandoned in the Black Mountains of Wales, Talgarth Asylum oozes character and atmosphere. But the ornate stonework and boarded-up windows are a bleak reminder of a time when care of the mentally ill was more about longterm isolation and crude experimental techniques than progressive therapy.Located near a small town of the same name, Talgarth Asylum was built in 1903 to house 352 patients. Originally called the Brecon and Radnor Joint Asylum, it became the Mid Wales Hospital in 1921 and was built in an echelon, or “compact arrow”, style, allowing for quick movement between any two points of the 200,000 square foot hospital.Patient numbers were bolstered by military personnel during World War One, many suffering from shell shock, while World War Two brought both psychiatric patients and prisoners of war. Severe overcrowding led to the construction of two additional wards by 1955 and a new treatment block was in place a decade later. But despite the old insane asylum’s passage into the era of modern medicine by the latter decades of the 20th century, new health legislation led to Talgarth Asylum’s closure by the mid 1990s.The 43 acre site, which includes extensive hospital buildings, five large family houses, a tennis court, cricket pitch and chapel, was reportedly disposed of several years ago in a controversial sale for around £355,000. Since then, the buildings have fallen into abandonment with signs of demolition across the site. But the remaining buildings, with their period charm coupled with a grim institutional reality, are a foreboding reminder of the history of Talgarth Asylum and other mental institutions of its era.
