1,611 Comments for Whittingham Hospital

cameron house wasnt destroyed by fire. the health authority realised that the slated had some valus, so they stripped the roof of and sold the lot!!!

willy banjo is a shop in preston that sells bongs and other erm, herbal smoking paraphenalia

i think the effect is the light outside, and the dark inside, coupled with the damage to the doors, have you noticed, one has been damaged from inisde the room and one from outside.

as a plumber there in the 1980's i replaced most of the lead on this roof, happy days!!!

this is definately ward 12 taken from ward 11. the low roof just below the treeline is the laundry

of course theres a more mundane explanation for the boarding up of windows.in the early pic the patients would be locked in cells or very very heavily sedated, and there would be a high ratio of staff to patients, however, as sedatives developed, patients were more free to wander the hospital at will, and , well, its still a mental hospital, and glass isnt exactly a friendly material. also its not very private if the other side is not something that should be public, like a bathroom entrance or toilet for example.

and yes, that is the same shot!!

many many moons ago these would have been the ubiquitous padded cell. obviously the doors arent original. drug advancements eant that the padded cell was out of use many many decades ago, these small rooms were all offices and staff rooms or store rooms by the 1970's the x's might have amore recent explanation. after wjhittingham shut., lancashire police used the empty buildings to train its dog teams in search techniques, so the x's might have indicated that the rooms had been searched in some exercise.

this is one of the only open corridors at whittingham, directly opposite the open side of the corridor is the dballroom, behind the wall to the right is the supervisors private allotment garden(see last picture)

and, yes, thats a tiled floor.

this is the lawns complex. when the hospital was built, the superintendant lived on site, in a big 'house' that was a part of the hospital, linked by 2 corridors, but seperate, locked off and private. it was a huge dwelling with about 7 or 8 bedrooms, offices , even a large private garden and allotment.etc etc. in late years, it was refurbished as a day centre for patients, with a cafe(where my wife worked) a shop, and a tv lounge, upstairs was a small library, a pool table and a full size snooker table, there was also a quiet lounge. and s taff room where the nursing staff devisede things to help the patients pass the day. the connection with the superintendant wasnt completely lost though. anyone who worked there will have known the road that leads up past this building from haighton mannor as 'supers(superintendants) hill'

i think this is in the laundry store room

this is either ward 7 taken from ward 6 or ward 14 taken from ward 15. the building was built with a mirror image of itself, as you will see from the google earth pics, so this could be either, a bit of detail in the background might make it easier to id, but i would think its probably ward 7

when i worked there, the place wasnt the depressing nuthouse it seems here, add in a couple of thousand patients, and as many very very dedicated staff and it was actually a generally happy place to be. we tend to look upon asylums as bad places, but whittigham did offer asylum from the world outside, it was a complete community seperated from the pressures of the outside world.
and if this is on ward 12, then the door at the end leads to the old hospital laundry

most of the abuse wasnt done on 16, it was on the ward next door, another 3 storey block that was formerly ward 8, after the enquiry, in a bid to remove any stigma, the ward was completely refurbished and re opened as ward S, therefore whittinghams wards in st lukes went 1+2(langdale unit, mixed sex), 3(female) 4(male) 5-corridor ward, no patients, but all cells unused when i was there just offices and the hospitals 'black museum', 6(f), 7(m) ward S-formerly wd8 (mixed on 3 floors) ward 9-again a corridor ward but used for the hospital libraryand other offices , wd 10(mixed-blind unit) wd 11(m) wd 12(f) no wd 13, obviously!!, wd 14-(f) formerly the tb ward, wd 15, male, and wd 16, mixed.
wards 3,4,S(8) 16, 11 and 12 were 3 storey wards the rest, , 6,7, 14, and 15 were 2 storey. there were another 3 hospitals on site as well as this one, st lukes, so the numbering actually went up to ward 46.

iirc, this ramp leads up to the main coridor from the langdale unit. a few pictures back theres another view from the other side of the doors at the top(behind the arched door/window frame. the mortuary when i was at whittingham was in a seperate building with 2 small chapels of rest, one r/c and one c of e, and a big fridge for the bodies. in the centre was a big stone lined room with a post mortem theatre. after that was closed and demolished, they converted the rooms that used to house the hospital coblker, who in times gone by, made shoes and boot and also surgical built up shoes and clogs for staff and patients alike.