An interesting view sent to us regarding the former Essex County Lunatic
Asylum which has undergone a similar type of redevelopment as High Royds.
This massive Victorian Gothic building with extensive landscaped gardens
was built on land purchased for £8000 from Brentwood Hall Estate and opened on 23 September 1853 to house 450 patients.
The names for the institution changed from County Lunatic Asylum to Brentwood
Mental Hospital in 1920.
In 1953, although still a long-stay psychiatric institution, it was renamed
Warley Hospital. As part of the NHS cutbacks it was run down and eventually closed by 2000, so that it could be sold off to
property developers to make massive profits.
The new estate that's been built on the site of the old County Lunatic Asylum
is now called 'Clements Park, Warley'. It is supposedly a stylish new luxury development but it’s pretty horrible –
towering walls of bright red brick, tiny slit windows like in some besieged fortress.
There’s already been a murder in one of the flats within a year of
it being built. I wonder about all the generations of poor demented and possessed souls who suffered the pain and anguish
of mental hell in their life in the asylum, and who died on the very site of Clements Park Estate.
Would their restless spirits invade your dreams as you slept in your luxury
apartment?
The property developers don't mention the real history. Prospective buyers
are lured with words like "Clements Park, in the picturesque village of
Warley is situated within beautiful mature parkland which once formed part of the prestigious Brentwood Hall Estate."
Funny that, no mention of the Lunatic Asylum.
Personally, I'd have to be insane before I'd agree to live there.
Anon
Silverstealth, I have just spent time looking at the photographs. It's
all really quite amazing and I hope that a more permanent record will result.
Those mosaic floors are so amazing & must have been very costly
to make. It is senseless that so much destruction has been allowed to happen and that so much of the history of this place
could be lost.
It also never ceases to amaze me that the asset management of public
buildings and all the resources they contain is often so poor. This applies to both currently used buildings, such as schools
destroyed by arsonists for want of more effective security and fire prevention systems, and even more so for redundant buildings
such as High Royds.
Keep up your good work & campaigning , it's brilliant!
Jasper
The builders are capping these tunnels that run under the whole of high royds and dumping
all the waste asbestos John
