234 Comments Posted by rich_edwards79

Sounds like the Catskills would be a good place to start hunting, JLP!

In some ways I still feel very sad for this place. Most of the places I stayed in as a child weren't especially pretty... the often deteriorating resorts and holiday parks of the South Coast of England, seeing out their twilight years by catering for the few too stubborn or too poor to jet off to 'the continent' like everyone else...

You don't care when you're ten or eleven that the carpets are threadbare, the decor is twenty years out-of-date or that the place is surrounded by the peeling hulks of hotels and boarded-up shops that have already succumbed to the inevitable.

Sadly I suspect there's no-one going to step in and save the Pines from the bulldozer - those flat roofs have undoubtedly doomed the place. Looking at the shots it seems that almost every one has failed, resulting in almost unbelievable water damage that would cost millions to even start putting right :(

Lynne, yet another fab post. I suspect most of the '"death = cool" brigade are 13 year-old wannabe goths who talk about corpses and cadavers yet would no doubt wee themselves if they ever came across a real one - especially in one of these places. The same people who hang around drinking cider in graveyards and breaking into crypts so they can post it on their cliched web pages with a load of dumb poetry to show how very 'alternative' they are. Fortunately they usually grow out of it. I think you were very restrained in your choice of the word 'asshat'. Anyway my Mom has a saying... "the dead can't hurt you, it's the living you need to watch out for!" So true...

No doubt why it was installed Peter! I wonder if the people who eventually re-fit this place (or more likely, tear it down) will appreciate the aesthetic and financial value of that centrepiece or whether it will just be smashed and slung in a skip along with those hideous couches :(

I'd still have serious qualms about removing something like that even though it is beautiful and its eventual destruction almost inevitable. Not the easiest thing to slip under your jacket and carry back to the car either... even if it weren't suspended 20 feet from the ground!

Excited, it's against the policy of this site to post access info or detailed directions here so you probably won't have much luck. Instead, I'd suggest El Peecho's Pennhurst site ( http://www.elpeecho.co...nhurst/pennhurst.htm ) which gives quite a lot of info and links to discussion boards about Pennhurst past & present.

What I would say is take time to research the place before you go, watch the newsreel and try to understand what Pennhurst represented and some of the terrible things that took place there. Don't be a muppet and damage it or take souvenirs, treat it with the respect that Motts did and that I would if I had ever had the opportunity to take a look around.

I'm English and my girlfriend is American... and the light-hearted 'to-may-to / to-mah-to' banter still tickles us lol! Not to mention the occasional confusion over vocabulary (especially regarding food items for some reason!?!) Well, as the old saying goes, we are two nations 'divided by a common language'. It's quite interesting to find out about the origins of the subtle differences in our speech and cultures...

I suppose someone wants the land to cover in identical 'executive' homes with hot tubs and double garages or some such rubbish.

I wonder if the missile silo is still there? I read an account on a UE site of two kids who explored one in New Mexico. This country is full of disused Cold War nuclear bunkers and underground command centres, I guess good old Blighty would have been first in the line of fire if the Soviets had ever decided to get bolshy lol...

Well said about grafitti. The good stuff belongs on the walls of youth centres and other specified places... MAYBE even brightening up dull concrete bridges and culverts... in other words where it's appreciated rather than being an eyesore on something beautiful. Tags on the other hand are just dumb. Why the desire to leave a mark anyway?

Either way, this dish would still be an amazing place to wath the stars with a loved one.

The fine line between order and chaos.

Chey, in Michele's defense I think the images of Byberry on this site show that not everyone shares our respect for these places. Many people just see a derelict building as a place to take drugs and party, and as a result they quickly become an eyesore and a hazard.

Sadly there's no way of controlling those who get inside - indeed the 'asshats' are less likely to be deterred by barbed wire and sealed entrances as they just smash their way in.

Put another way, would you want a Byberry in your neighbourhood?

That's cool Selig, and maybe my response was a tad harsh. I think that a couple of people at work know I visit this site, so if you are still interested then maybe drop me an email privately (rich_edwards79@yahoo.co.uk) though if you've seen my posts on the BBC boards you'll probably know about most of the places I do!

BritChick... I nearly saw inside the Merrion cinema on a guided tour of the old mall recently but had to cancel at the last minute. From the pictures I've seen it looks very much like a 1960s lecture hall. It's intriguing not for it's architectural interest but mainly because it's hidden in a busy shopping centre, covered with an anonymous frontage and very few people seem to know it's still there, looking like the day they closed it (lairy yellow / brown carpets and all!) I may have some photos somewhere if anyone is interested...

Now I'M jealous that you have old asylums in the South-East, quite a few of them too if the other UE sites I've come across are to be believed... not much like that here other than the place mentioned above...

That thing would startle the bejeezus out of me if I came across it in a pitch-black, burned-out building. Which is probably one of the reasons I don't do too much urban exploring - I'm a fraidy cat lol...

Twug, at the time the UK was in the depths of recession, and cheap package holidays to hi-rise hotels in Spain and Greece were also seen as a better option than UK chalet parks like this, which were associated with being quite dated, and were frequently more expensive than their Continental counterparts without the guaranteed hot weather (our maritime climate is variable, even in summer, to say the least).

Plus, the damage was eventually costed at £2 million, which added to the lost takings from the 1991 season (the park was fully catered and the restaurant, along with the site shop, lounges, bars, kids' club and most of the other indoor facilities) were destroyed or damaged enough to put them out of commission, and hence prevent bookings being honoured) quickly made the place a financial burden.

i think plans are afoot to flatten it once the asbestos has been removed from the 1960s buildings, and turn it into another dull housing estate :(

Dean, that figures, and I guess it's a good thing for preservationists, because a ship of that size would burn very spectacularly if some teenage arsonist managed to gain entry, or sink very expensively if someone opened the seacocks 'for a laugh'.

It's so sad to see so many of these old liners in such bad shape. They were after all the height of luxury and technology when new and are still probably the biggest moving objects ever built by humans. As with so much, we should show them more respect.

Only the Queen Mary's story seems to have had a happy ending, as the Norway (formerly the France, herself the replacement for the famed Normandie) has just been decommissioned as uneconomic.

It's amazing how people fuss over the Titanic, which lies in bits at the bottom of the North Altlantic, and talk every so often of raising her, when these ships are still living and could have a future if anyone cared enough.

Even if nothing else can be found to do with these liners than turn them into floating hotels or universities, surely that's a better fate than ending up as Coke cans or Toyotas...

Me too Ed, they're one of the most compelling things about this site, up there with the shots themselves. But Lynne, surely this must freak even you out a little bit? Knowing what we do about what went on at Pennhurst?! I don't think most people here are saying that all institutions are, or even were, hideous places full of terror and abuse, or even that all of Pennhurst was like that, but the shots of this room are very unnerving.

I don't pity the 'children' that lived here for their disabilities, as I said I know a couple of people who are developmentally 'challenged' in some way or another and I certainly don't feel sorry for them, nor would they want people to do so. But I do pity the Pennhurst clients for the way many of them were treated, whether that took the form of deliberate abuse by a tiny minority of the staff or the more widespread neglect that saw residents tied to their beds, attacked by other patients or simply so regressed that they were unable to walk or talk because they'd never been given the opportunity to do so.

Of course even with testimonies from ex-patients, and footage of the place in use, Pennhurst was so massive and affected so many people over nearly eight decades that we'll probably never know the full story behind it. These murals could well have been painted by some of the residents themselves. And it's odd to think how if that were confirmed to be the case, I think most would agree that this room would lose many of its unpleasant connotations...

Well Lynne, you certainly made me think and reconsider some of my views... so the wall isn't the only thing to benefit from your 'rants' :-)