Ok dropping an asylum in today's back catalog collection:
Visited with Winch & Hydra. We'd planned to visit Denbigh for a good couple of months. Everything was set/planned out and they we got word that Most Haunted would be there during the week. We hoped by the weekend they'd fucked off but nope were still clearing up and also there was just too many people around to entertain it. Gutted as two weeks later the hall burnt down and we missed out on seeing that ceiling. Plan B quickly formed to visiting Deva instead. Well it was never really called Deva as such but then Denbigh was never called Denbigh Mental but local names tend to stick. Oddly didn't get any externals here and it was a bit of a rushed/blurred fest of photos. I'm not sure who else joined us here but clearly there were 4 of us in at one point!
Bit of history:
In 1829, the Cheshire Lunatic Asylum opened on part of the site. The county’s mental health unit was based in the ‘Lunatic Asylum Building’. The name of the site changed throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, from the “Chester County Lunatic Asylum”, to “County Mental Hospital”, to the “Upton Mental Hospital”, finally the “Deva Hospital”. During this period, treatment for mental illness changed from institutional confinement to medication and therapy making the wards less busy. Eventually less than 5% of patients were kept confined in the hospital for treatment. Since closure, the majority of later buildings have been demolished including the Annexe and male wing, although the original ‘1829’ building survives in continued usage as does the former Chaplains residence. The majority of the site has been absorbed by extensions to the Countess of Chester health park or been redeveloped as housing.
You can find externals and a full history on CA https://www.countyasylums.co.uk/deva/
Pics
Visited with Winch & Hydra. We'd planned to visit Denbigh for a good couple of months. Everything was set/planned out and they we got word that Most Haunted would be there during the week. We hoped by the weekend they'd fucked off but nope were still clearing up and also there was just too many people around to entertain it. Gutted as two weeks later the hall burnt down and we missed out on seeing that ceiling. Plan B quickly formed to visiting Deva instead. Well it was never really called Deva as such but then Denbigh was never called Denbigh Mental but local names tend to stick. Oddly didn't get any externals here and it was a bit of a rushed/blurred fest of photos. I'm not sure who else joined us here but clearly there were 4 of us in at one point!
Bit of history:
In 1829, the Cheshire Lunatic Asylum opened on part of the site. The county’s mental health unit was based in the ‘Lunatic Asylum Building’. The name of the site changed throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, from the “Chester County Lunatic Asylum”, to “County Mental Hospital”, to the “Upton Mental Hospital”, finally the “Deva Hospital”. During this period, treatment for mental illness changed from institutional confinement to medication and therapy making the wards less busy. Eventually less than 5% of patients were kept confined in the hospital for treatment. Since closure, the majority of later buildings have been demolished including the Annexe and male wing, although the original ‘1829’ building survives in continued usage as does the former Chaplains residence. The majority of the site has been absorbed by extensions to the Countess of Chester health park or been redeveloped as housing.
You can find externals and a full history on CA https://www.countyasylums.co.uk/deva/
Pics
