Introduction
First of all, I’d like to say thanks to admin for organising such a great meet last Saturday. I enjoyed it from start to finish, met some great people, and had some excellent conversations. The after-party was unexpected and bloody brilliant.
As me and Jake were already going to the meet (3 hours North from us) it made sense to do a trip further up North while we were at it, heading up the west coast towards Glasgow and then across to the east near the England/Scotland border, finishing at Northumberland before heading back home. We had some good luck, and some bad but in the end we covered a nice array of places (and no, they were not all pump houses!). The Stannington boiler house is something I have wanted to see for years now since seeing Mikey’s report years ago, we had no idea if it was still there but to our delight it was, and it was accessible albeit a bit of a squeeze.
Information & History
Stannington Sanatorium was a children's tuberculosis sanatorium which opened in 1907 in Northumberland. It opened with 50 beds but later expanded thanks to high demand and some large donations. Stannington was the first TB sanatorium to open in the UK specifically for Children. The NHS took over the sanatorium in 1948 and was later converted to a general children’s hospital. With advancements in pharmaceutical treatment such as antibiotics the tuberculosis operations at the site declined. The hospital closed in 1984 and was later demolished.
The boiler house itself provided the sanatorium with heating and hot water. It dodged demolition and still sits in a decayed state. The building houses two boilers which were supplied by Oldbury-based Edwin Danks & Company Ltd. Edwin Danks was founded in 1868 and began its life supplying tanks for local brickworks. Around a decade later, the company expanded its offerings and began manufacturing boilers for larger clients.
The Explore
This one was pretty easy and chilled out. It did involve doing a bit of crawling around to get in but this wasn’t overly difficult. We were initially disappointed to find that part of the boiler house is now being used to store various tat from a nearby farm activity centre such as Christmas decorations and signs, this made getting the overview shots a little more challenging and we had to get a bit creative to avoid getting the storage items in the shots.
Photos
Thanks for looking!
First of all, I’d like to say thanks to admin for organising such a great meet last Saturday. I enjoyed it from start to finish, met some great people, and had some excellent conversations. The after-party was unexpected and bloody brilliant.
As me and Jake were already going to the meet (3 hours North from us) it made sense to do a trip further up North while we were at it, heading up the west coast towards Glasgow and then across to the east near the England/Scotland border, finishing at Northumberland before heading back home. We had some good luck, and some bad but in the end we covered a nice array of places (and no, they were not all pump houses!). The Stannington boiler house is something I have wanted to see for years now since seeing Mikey’s report years ago, we had no idea if it was still there but to our delight it was, and it was accessible albeit a bit of a squeeze.
Information & History
Stannington Sanatorium was a children's tuberculosis sanatorium which opened in 1907 in Northumberland. It opened with 50 beds but later expanded thanks to high demand and some large donations. Stannington was the first TB sanatorium to open in the UK specifically for Children. The NHS took over the sanatorium in 1948 and was later converted to a general children’s hospital. With advancements in pharmaceutical treatment such as antibiotics the tuberculosis operations at the site declined. The hospital closed in 1984 and was later demolished.
The boiler house itself provided the sanatorium with heating and hot water. It dodged demolition and still sits in a decayed state. The building houses two boilers which were supplied by Oldbury-based Edwin Danks & Company Ltd. Edwin Danks was founded in 1868 and began its life supplying tanks for local brickworks. Around a decade later, the company expanded its offerings and began manufacturing boilers for larger clients.
The Explore
This one was pretty easy and chilled out. It did involve doing a bit of crawling around to get in but this wasn’t overly difficult. We were initially disappointed to find that part of the boiler house is now being used to store various tat from a nearby farm activity centre such as Christmas decorations and signs, this made getting the overview shots a little more challenging and we had to get a bit creative to avoid getting the storage items in the shots.
Photos
Thanks for looking!
