I made a visit down to Harperbury this week, as I was in the area. Nothing much has really changed.
I checked out the Commons first, which is the encirclement of villa buildings on the far side of the side.
Harperbury is in poor condition. The 1929 buildings have nothing in common with the more favoured Victorian and Edwardian hospital constructions. Even the 1929 corridor plan Psychiatric Hospital at Shenley is more attractive, although Harperbury is arguably more modern.
The most interesting part of Harperbury is possibly the activity centre. Featuring a swimming pool and what appears to be several classrooms, this section was most likely used for the epileptic children that were based on this site.
When Harperbury first opened, it was called built as a colony for Shenley Hospital, to be known as a "Colony for Mental Defectives", later for the "feeble minded" or in more modern parlance, "A disabled school".
Large parts of the hospital have closed, although perhaps a third is still open; The hall is still active, a few utilities still run: Harperbury is almost a ghost hospital.
Vandals have struck large parts of the hospital. What was once an huge fish tank is now a case of smashed glass.
Mother Nature has has a go as well. The ceiling has dropped into the floor, making a peculiarly dirty floor beneath otherwise acceptable floors.
When I visited a year or so back, this large rainbow crowned a blackboard; now it's a background to the centrepiece created by a youth with a spraycan.
Either way, what would be overlooked at another hospital is perhaps a centrepiece here, such is the normality of Harperbury.
Boarded up buildings can be quite intimidating inside, their lack of light also making it difficult to percieve what they might have been like in their more useful days. I can imagine light streaming into this classroom from one side: Now, it's a ruin with a dodgy floor.
One of the giveaways that this was used as a school for epileptics is the various padded areas spread throughout the hospital. At the back of the classroom in the above shot is this box with no door, maybe a place to shove a child having a fit?
If these buildings hadn't had a medical/psychiatric past, I feel that perhaps they would be overlooked by explorers. They're not interesting from the outside, and to find the interesting parts inside, you really have to look hard. You can try to create metaphors and imagery using the swings, abandoned chairs, abandoned everything, but in a place with such little atmosphere, it's difficult.
Moving to the football pitch side of the hospital, I saw what appeared to be a prefabricated block, with a hole kicked in the side of it. I crawled through.
Rumours were that the padded cell block had been boarded up. I was determined to find it. 2 years ago, explorers claimed to have found a row of padded cells, but nobody has found or photographed them since.
These buildings were in poor state too. It was apparent that no attempt to secure them had been made other than a token chipboard boarding on each ground floor door and window.
Harperbury was built in the colony design, meaning that separate villas and buildings were constructed, each being a small community in it's own right, having little to do the the others other than during recreational periods.
Upstairs in each of these two storied villas was more reminiscent of popular destinations, although the sprawl of corridors, ward blocks, toilets and baths was missing.
Again, you may feel that images like these are common sight for an explorer, and they are. I felt more at home here.
At long last I found what I had been looking for. This ground floor padded cell was more modern than the extensively photographed one at west Park, but it shared some of it's characteristics. Padding on the floor and walls, round edges, this one not being leather and horse hair, but cold PVC and foam.
Double Bathrooms featured a little here; Patients would have been rushed through on bathday, supervised by a nurse. Privacy was not a priority here, functionality was.
An outbuilding contained wheelchairs and baths, silently rusting away in a breezeblock cage. When people complain about NHS funding and bed shortages, they need to look here. What could once have been used for patients is now not even salvageable.
Upstairs in this dormitory type area was depressingly uniformed. Nothing remained of the patients' belongings or identities, not even a poster on the wall or a name pinned to cubicle. Harperbury is just a ruin.
In the centre, the football pitch is still used. Despite the rural setting of Harperbury, it's right close to the M25. Which I was soon on, getting away from this mundane, identity free place.
I checked out the Commons first, which is the encirclement of villa buildings on the far side of the side.
Harperbury is in poor condition. The 1929 buildings have nothing in common with the more favoured Victorian and Edwardian hospital constructions. Even the 1929 corridor plan Psychiatric Hospital at Shenley is more attractive, although Harperbury is arguably more modern.
When Harperbury first opened, it was called built as a colony for Shenley Hospital, to be known as a "Colony for Mental Defectives", later for the "feeble minded" or in more modern parlance, "A disabled school".
Large parts of the hospital have closed, although perhaps a third is still open; The hall is still active, a few utilities still run: Harperbury is almost a ghost hospital.
Vandals have struck large parts of the hospital. What was once an huge fish tank is now a case of smashed glass.
Boarded up buildings can be quite intimidating inside, their lack of light also making it difficult to percieve what they might have been like in their more useful days. I can imagine light streaming into this classroom from one side: Now, it's a ruin with a dodgy floor.
One of the giveaways that this was used as a school for epileptics is the various padded areas spread throughout the hospital. At the back of the classroom in the above shot is this box with no door, maybe a place to shove a child having a fit?
If these buildings hadn't had a medical/psychiatric past, I feel that perhaps they would be overlooked by explorers. They're not interesting from the outside, and to find the interesting parts inside, you really have to look hard. You can try to create metaphors and imagery using the swings, abandoned chairs, abandoned everything, but in a place with such little atmosphere, it's difficult.
Moving to the football pitch side of the hospital, I saw what appeared to be a prefabricated block, with a hole kicked in the side of it. I crawled through.
Rumours were that the padded cell block had been boarded up. I was determined to find it. 2 years ago, explorers claimed to have found a row of padded cells, but nobody has found or photographed them since.
These buildings were in poor state too. It was apparent that no attempt to secure them had been made other than a token chipboard boarding on each ground floor door and window.
Harperbury was built in the colony design, meaning that separate villas and buildings were constructed, each being a small community in it's own right, having little to do the the others other than during recreational periods.
Upstairs in each of these two storied villas was more reminiscent of popular destinations, although the sprawl of corridors, ward blocks, toilets and baths was missing.
Again, you may feel that images like these are common sight for an explorer, and they are. I felt more at home here.
At long last I found what I had been looking for. This ground floor padded cell was more modern than the extensively photographed one at west Park, but it shared some of it's characteristics. Padding on the floor and walls, round edges, this one not being leather and horse hair, but cold PVC and foam.
Double Bathrooms featured a little here; Patients would have been rushed through on bathday, supervised by a nurse. Privacy was not a priority here, functionality was.
An outbuilding contained wheelchairs and baths, silently rusting away in a breezeblock cage. When people complain about NHS funding and bed shortages, they need to look here. What could once have been used for patients is now not even salvageable.
Upstairs in this dormitory type area was depressingly uniformed. Nothing remained of the patients' belongings or identities, not even a poster on the wall or a name pinned to cubicle. Harperbury is just a ruin.
