"The old monotonous radiating plan is modified by having smaller, two-story blocks inserted between the larger three-story ones, but the effect is cramped and restricted".

During the 1889 lunatic commission's investigations into the expansion of Cane Hill, the asylums regime was further praised by one of the witnesses a Dr Albutt who testified

"I may say that I was exceedingly pleased with Cane Hill Asylum and what I was saying about the importance of the sympathetic association of the medical officers and attendants with the patients struck me as more fully illustrated there than in any place I have ever been to. I noticed this both on the female and on the male side".

Although highly praised within the medical community it is the early years of asylum treatment that have created many of the negative myths which still surround mental hospitals today. With a permanent cure beyond reach, many of the more disruptive and violent inmates needed to be restrained physically and the use of padded cells and straight jackets date back to the earliest days of the Cane Hill. The asylums initial regime would remain relatively unchanged until the late 19th century when the first attempts to develop a form of treatment began, These included hot and cold water treatments like cold sheet therapy where patients were tightly wrapped in cold damp sheets which aimed to reduce agitation and clear the brain. Other water therapies typical of the period included cold shower treatments or ice cap therapy where a patient was seated in a tub of hot bath water for a prolonged period with a cap filled with ice applied to their heads. These early treatments could be considered the first Shock therapies which would later typify the asylum system.

It was around this time Cane Hill would admit the first of several patients with famous relatives. In 1912 the diaries of Charlie Chaplin the silent movie star include descriptions of visits to his mother Hannah who had been admitted to the hospital with an undiagnosed mental illness around 1910,

"One day while Sydney was playing football, two nurses called him out of the game and told him that Mother had gone insane and had been sent to Cane Hill lunatic asylum. When Sydney heard the news he showed no reaction but went back and continued playing football. But after the game he stole away by himself and wept. When he told me I could not believe it. I did not cry, but a baffling despair came over me. Why had she done this? Mother, so light-hearted and gay, how could she go insane? Vaguely I felt that she had deliberately escaped from her mind and had deserted us. In my despair, I had visions of her looking pathetically at me, drifting away into a void."

Chaplin's remembrances of visiting his mother provide some of the only descriptions of life at Cane Hill during it's early years.

"During rehearsals Sydney and I went to Cane Hill to see Mother. At first the nurses told us she could not be seen as she was not well that day. They took Sydney aside out of my hearing, but I heard him say: 'No, I don't think he would.' Then turning to me sadly: 'You don't want to see Mother in a padded room?' ....'No, no! I couldn't bear it!' I said, recoiling. ...But Sydney saw her and Mother recognised him and became rational. A few minutes later a nurse told me that Mother was well enough , if I wished to see her, and we sat together in her padded room. Before leaving she took me aside and whispered forlornly: 'Don't lose your way because they might keep you here.' "

"It was a depressing day, for she was not well. She had just got over an obstreperous phase of singing hymns, and had been confined to a padded room. The nurse had warned us of this beforehand. Sydney saw her, but I had not the courage, so I waited. He came back upset, and said that she had been given shock treatment of icy cold showers and that her face was quite blue. That made us decide to put her into a private institution - we could afford it now."

They moved her to Peckham House a private mental institution in London until 1915 when money ran out and Hannah was returned to the workhouse.

In later years Cane hill would become home to two other patients with famous relatives the first Terry Burns was half brother of musician David Bowie, He sadly committed suicide on the tracks of South Coulsdon Railway station in January 1985 after climbing over the hospital wall. The second was David half brother to actor Sir Michael Caine, a severe epileptic David had been admitted to the hospital as a child and spent nearly his entire life there. Although regularly visited by his mother he was kept secret from her new family, who only found found out about David after her death. He died of natural causes in 1992 shortly after the hospital closed and only 18 months after meeting his half brother Michael for the first time. These tragic stories are only known because of the links to famous relatives must surely reflect the sad stories behind many other forgotten patients who lived with the hospitals wards over the years.

1915 saw the loss of one of the London County Asylum's leading figures with the death of Sir James Moody the first superintendent on the 20th of September. In accordance with his wishes he was buried four days later in the asylums cemetery across the road from the Portnalls roads gate house. His grave was marked with a small celtic cross. The patients who ended there days in the asylum received less attention, after passing through the mortuary the unclaimed made their finally journey to the a cemetery, their resting places were marked with simple pottery markers inscribed only with their hospital numbers. Surviving grave markers are preserved in the Croydon Museum (link). Burials in the hospital cemetery ceased in the 1960's and the site was sold off for development in during the following decade, it is now the site of a number of houses. Sir James Moody's memorial was removed to the safety of a plot near the hospitals administration block but the patients markers were simply cleared away their remains are believed to have been moved before the new houses were erected.

The growth of scientific medicine during the early twenty century resulted in the development of the psychiatric concept of mental hygiene which for the first time recognised mental illness as a nervous disorder and sought to find its causes and treatment for the conditions it caused. The introduction of these new treatments for the insane began a subtle change in the culture of the Cane Hill and for the first time it began a shift from a place of asylum for long term care to one of treatment. the most obvious sign of this change was in it's name, which from 1918 would include the word hospital for the first time when it became Cane Hill Mental Hospital. The change of name was shared by many asylums across the country and was recognised by law in the Mental Treatment Act of 1930, it adapted the terminology surrounding mental health treatment forever by consigning the word asylum to the history books to be replaced by the term mental hospital. Likewise the residents of the mental health system would now longer be referred to using the degraded word lunatic, which had lost its original scientific meaning from then on they were called patients just like the sufferer of a broken leg.

The earliest forms of physical treatment for mental illness have since fallen into disrepute and abandonment and seem quite strange in the modern age. Malaria had been proven to halt the onset of syphilitic paresis, a form of dementia associated with the sexually transmitted disease syphilis, which ultimately results in death. So patients suffering from the condition were intentionally infected with malaria as a treatment, and while it was effective against syphilitic paresis malaria was also ineffectually induced in the suffers of other mental conditions. The 1930's saw the introduction of deep sleep therapy in which barbiturates were used to induce a coma lasting between one to eight weeks as a treatment for schizophrenia and depression. which led to the similar hypoglycemic shock therapy which used large doses of insulin to induce a coma and convulsions in schizophrenic patients. Psychoanalysis also emerged in the 1930's but physical treatments would remain dominant in the treatment of the mentally ill within mental hospitals, it was years before psychiatry and and medical treatments became integrated. The shock therapies were successful by the measures of their day, easing the symptoms of the patient leaving them calmer and more manageable but were a long way from a permanent cure.

They were soon to be joined by another technique which would prove to have greater benefits against the causes of some mental illnesses. Electro Convulsive Therapy was introduced in the 1940's to treat depression, schizophrenia and Mania, using short pulses of electric currents to induce an epileptic fit. ECT developed from observations of patients with depression or schizophrenia, and who also had epilepsy who appeared to recover after having a fit. Cane Hill was one of the first mental hospitals in the country to employ ECT and it become widely used during the 1950s and 1960s for a variety of conditions.

One of the largest yet at the same time smallest changes in the hospitals history occurred on the 5 July 1948 when the National Heath Service was formed. Cane Hill Hospital was transferred from the management of London council to the South West Metropolitan Board of the National Health Service under its own management committee. Despite the changes in the ownership and management of the hospital, very little changed in the they way it performed its work. Patients had always been admitted to the hospital without regard to their means so it already reflected the ideals of the new NHS. The hospital also found itself with another new name, the word mental was dropped from it's title it was now just Cane Hill Hospital the name it would keep for the remainder of it working life. One of the changes which resulting from the transfer to the NHS was brought an end to the hospital farm, in 1953 the health minister announced and end to all farming and market gardening activities at all hospitals, as a result Cane Hill's farm was sold off and the greenhouses were abandoned and allowed to become derelict.

There was how ever some expansion at the hospital when in 1956 a new industrial therapy unit was added in a single story block on the western side of the hospital. In a similar approach to the early regime at Cane Hill selected patients could be employed in manual tasks paralleling working conditions in the outside world, but the aim of industrial therapy was to prepare patients for life in the outside world rather than distract them from a long life within it's walls. Around the same time a smaller art block was added within one of the internal courtyards which provided patients with a creative outlet, but a bigger change was on the horizon.

The 1950's have been described as the therapeutic revolution as the development of new drugs were proven to have huge results in the treatment of mental conditions. Cane Hill was at the forefront of this revolution within Britain. In 1953 Dr F.B.E Charatan began trials of the new drug Largactil on a group of 18 patients at Cane Hill. Largactil was proven to ease the symptoms of hallucinations, delusions, agitation and thought disorders and was hailed as a wonder drug in the mental health community. It was fully licensed in the Britain the following year and was widely used for its calming effects Dr Charatan described the effect on his patients as leaving them. "Motionless and Relaxed; staring, disinterested and remote, but not drowsy, and with consciousness unimpaired". Lithium was also discovered as an effective treatment of manic patients and was a mainstay of the hospital right up until its closure and Tofranil the first effective anti depressant soon developed into a new family of effective medications. Not all of the trials performed at Cane Hill were successful in 1955 Dr A. J. Oldham conducted a comparative trial of ECT and the new drug Isoniazid, in 33 patients suffering from depression. Isoniazid was developed as an anti tuberculous medication and was proven to have no beneficial effects in the treatment of depression but during the 1950's and 60's there was a willingness to try any of the newly developed medications in the search for the next wonder drug, Dr Oldman's trial was just one of many conducted at Cane Hill that were beginning to reshape the future of mental health treatment.

The availability of psychotropic drugs began to break the reliance on the shock therapies and hypoglycemic shock therapy, deep sleep therapy were replaced by the so called chemical lobotomy. By the 1960's the availability of effective medications was beginning a move towards out patient care which would mark out the course of Cane Hill's last thirty years as a hospital. The first public commitment towards community care was made by the then Health Secretary, Enoch Powell in a speech made in 1961 which has become known as the "water tower" speech. In it he committed to the final and complete closure of the countries large mental hospitals, to be replaced by community care supported by psychiatric units attached to general hospitals all within fifteen years. The former asylums like Cane Hill identified by their gigantic brooding water towers had no place in the health secretary's vision of the future for mental health, he went further "For the great majority of these establishments there is no appropriate future use," In the case of Cane Hill he appears to have been correct.

It proved to be a lot longer than fifteen years before Mr Powell's vision came to fruition, but the hospitals patient numbers had began to decline, by 1965 they had reduced to 1600 resulting in the first ward closures at Cane Hill. Although the new psychiatric drugs were proving effective many were found to be short acting and had to be administered frequently in a controlled environment, something which could only be provided in a hospital setting which left many patients still unfit for community care. The search was still being conducted into an effective replacement for ECT treatment for depression and Cane Hill was once again leading the way. In 1963 Dr John Hutchinson and Dr Daphne Smedberg conducted a comparative study of the effectiveness of ECT in comparison to six of newly developed anti depressants, involving 200 female in-patients at Cane Hill hospital. After a three week course of treatment they concluded that ECT had been dramatically more effective than any of the alternative drugs. On a side note Dr Hutchinson must have made an impression at the hospital, with the Industrial therapy unit being named in his honor.

Although the process of ward closures begun during the 1960's it wasn't all doom and gloom at the hospital in fact a number of new buildings were to open during the course of the decade. A new nurses hostel had been erected away from the main buildings during the 1930's to house live in staff and the growing number of students coming to attend the Cane Hill School of Nursing. In 1965 this block was extended by the addition of an 18 bedroom two floor wing to house the male nurses and students, The main hostel was reserved for female staff. Not long after the hospitals social club erected its own block.

The move towards care outside of institutions had slowed during the 1970's and Enoch Powell's deadline came and went. The hospital's patient numbers had continued to drop but very slowly, by 1971 there were 1,451 inpatients with the hospitals total capacity reduced to 1,750. 1,150 of these were still confined to locked wards. The remaining patients were given some freedom to roam the hospital's public areas and some new facilities had been added to introduce aspects of real life beyond the hospitals walls. Nightingale ward had been converted into a socialisation center for the patients complete with with pool tables and darts board for them them to while away a few hours. The "Pop Inn" cafe would sell tea and coffees and the patient proud of her appearance could stop off at the "Top to Toe" boutique for a new dress or at the hairdressers to get a new doo, but to pay for all these new delights they would have to stop off at the "patients bank" first.

By the mid 1970's The first long-acting anti-psychotic drug "Modecate" was introduced as a counterpart to Largactil, Modocate which was especially effective in the treatment of chronic schizophrenia, offered an effective method of medicating patients outside of the hospital. A single treatment was effective for several weeks allowing a patient to be treated on an outpatient basis at a "Modocate clinic" they would only need to be admitted to the hospital if they refused their injection or failed to attend the clinic. Meanwhile the new additions to the hospitals social scene began to take on a new significance in preparing patients to reenter life in the community.

The election of the conservative government in 1979 was to mark a turning point in mental health care. A confidential report prepared by Cecil Parkinson MP endorsed community care and recommended a determined program of hospital closures, linked to a statutory duty of care and financial incentives for local councils to make provisions within their community. The report found that although successive governments had made a commitment to community care, in reality it had not been implemented. Although patients were leaving the psychiatric hospitals government money and professional skills were still invested within the hospital system leaving the released patient in the community without the network of support they needed. The findings of the report were finally made public in the "Care in the Community" green paper of 1981 which introduced a number of measures to transfer funds for mental health provision away from the NHS to local authorities and voluntary associations, for the provision of community based programs and hostels, backed up with acute units and psychiatric wards at general hospitals for those requiring inpatient treatment. The program allowed the NHS trusts a period of seven years later extended to thirteen, to develop and implement a program to transfer their patients to the community.

Cane Hill appears to have been identified for closure quite early in this process, By 1985 the inpatients at the hospital had dropped to 643. As the hospital wound down wards were closed. The building's modular design allowed for whole pavilions to be sealed off as they became surplus to requirements without affecting the remainder of the hospital. The long held practice of separating the patients by sex had also been abandoned, wards were now mixed and although the dormitories were still separate, patients could now mix within their ward's day rooms. The former male side of the hospital already contained some wards which had been closed in the 1960's and 70's so it was selected for closure first, one by one the wards it housed were shut from the rear of the hospital moving forwards as patients and services were transferred to the former female side and then to the outside community. By 1989 only Rossetti the male medical ward, Nightingale the socialisation center and the Queens, Olave pavilion along side the administration block remained open in this half of the hospital.

As the hospital contracted into a smaller area within the left hand side of the hospital building many of the wards there began to find a new if short lived purpose, One became a store for disused hospital equipment removed from other closed wards part of Ellis wards was converted to house the "positive futures exhibition". Finally the residential wards on this side of the hospital began to close too, followed by the Pop Inn and Top to Toe, by the end of 1991 the hospital which had once been home to 2000 patients was all but empty It finally closed its doors in on the 31st of March 1992 after 110 years providing mental health care to the residents of south London. Care in the community was heavily criticised during the 1990's for abandoning the mentally ill to a life of homelessness and crime on the streets, In independent review of the policy the resettlement program pursued at Cane Hill was used as evidence for the it's success, less than 1% of the patients leaving the hospital was found to be untraceable or homeless.

As predicted by Enoch Powell in the sixties Cane Hill struggled to find a new role following its closure as a hospital, the site was located within the london green belt which limited its potential for redevelopment. Its design of radiating wards criticised in its early years for the poor light within them, did not lend themselves so easily to conversion for residential use as many other former psychiatric hospitals did and they failed to attract a developer willing to take them on. The years have been unkind to the disused hospital, it has suffered many attacks by arsonists and vandals. Cane Hill eventually found itself in the hands of English Partnerships the national regeneration agency established to dispose of former government properties and stimulate their redevelopment. In 2007 plans were submitted for the demolition of the buildings at Cane Hill to make the site more attractive for a mixed use development. The only buildings set to remain are the administration block, chapel and the water tower which have gained a local listing because of their importance historically and as local landmarks.

My visit to Cane Hill Hospital came in the summer of 2007 two days before the demolition began accompanied by a group of fellow photographers come to capture some final images of the complete asylum. After making the climb up the hill along Portnalls road we followed the footpath alongside the hospital, here and there one of the great pavilions emerged from the overgrown trees and bushes within the hospital grounds. We entered the hospital on the old female side through a door which led into the pavilion that contained Browning and Blake wards. Each ward occupied a whole floor of the pavilion, Browning on the first floor and Blake on the ground floor. We first headed up the stone steps of the main stairwell towards Browning. The ward like all the others in the hospital was divided up into separate rooms we entered into one of three day rooms which occupied the central section of pavilion, they were joined to each other by an open double doorways. At each end of the pavilion the day rooms led on to communal dormitories. In the early years both of these would have been reserved just for female patients, but as the hospital began to close the ward was shared with one dormitory for females and the other for male patients. I headed off into the female dormitory where despite the ravages of sixteen years abandonment it was still equipped almost exactly like the day it was closed. Along each wall beds were still lined up with the privacy curtains hanging between them, the bed lockers still labeled with their last patients name, one still had some greetings cards on top of it. At the end of the ward a medical trolley still held the equipment used on its last rounds, a syringe, cotton buds and an empty vial of Lithium.

Back out in the day room the doorway we entered through was flanked by a row of doors, back when the ward was first built these led to the seclusion rooms used to patients too disruptive for a night in the dormitory. In later years they had been converted to other uses, One was the ward office, it still contained a desk crowded with paper work marked "Cane Hill Hospital". On the wall a white board recorded the names of the last patients and their course of treatment. Another room had become a small dispensary with a large medical cabinet firmly mounted to the walls. Next door another had become a wardrobe, from a clothes rail on the wall, hangers labeled with patients names were still hanging the outside clothes they once stored had gone along with their owners. The day room itself was filled with abandoned equipment a large mobile plate warmer stood in the center of the floor still full of stacked NHS plates, over in the adjoining day room a smashed upright piano lay on the floor. The male dormitory was less intact than the female one, beds still lay against the wall under a thick covering of dust. Here and there a pillow remained marked as the property of "Bromley Health Authority".

Browning ward was typical of the many wards in Cane Hill we would visit that day there had been forty nine wards in the hospitals heyday. The layout of each ward was slightly different depending on which type of pavilion it was housed within. Blake ward which we visited next was identical to Browning above it. The ward was almost empty apart from a mountain of hospital equipment piled up in one of it's day rooms a stack of zimmer frames along side abandoned wheelchairs. Plans of the hospital in its final years show the ECT Unit attached attached to Blake ward. The treatment rooms were located in a small block where the ward met the corridor network the ward itself housed the recovery unit where patients came round from a course of treatment.

Leaving the ward block we entered the hospital's corridor system for the first time the wards we were leaving were the closest to the administration building at the front of the hospital, and we headed there next. The corridor which took us towards admin had a few doors along its left hand side. The first of these opened out in to the hospitals dental clinic, in the center of the room the treatment chair was still sat, the floor of the room slowly collapsing around it. Next door was the patients library in an equally poor condition, small weeds were taking hold in the damp floor boards around a magazine rack which still held copies of magazines from 1991. The library shelves had been emptied of books but the labels on the shelves did not refer to the latest works of fiction, but instead catalogued the hospitals death records, The room had been the records room before it became a library.

At the end of a the corridor we reached the administration block, where a hallway lead to a one of the front doorways. The administration block was once decorated with wood paneling and stained glass but most of the decoration has been removed leaving a series of empty rooms. No clues to their former purpose remains, it is impossible now to tell the difference between the medical library, hospital managers office or the personnel department which all occupied rooms within the administration block. After a quick tour through the empty rooms we headed back down the corridor towards the the center of the hospital, after a short distance the corridor reached a crossroads where it met the main semi circular corridor linking the ward pavilions. Stepping out of the corridor we entered the staff cafeteria, among the undergrowth of plants which called the room home the outlines of a canteen could still be seen, a broken roll down counter curtain still hung over the serving counter and in the corner lay the skeleton of a broken Coke machine. The cafeteria had originally been the female bath house where two rows of bath tubs had been lined up side by side.

We headed out of the cafeteria through the adjoining kitchen back out into the corridors, We were now heading down the main corridor towards the ward blocks, As we got closer to the first pavilion the roof of the corridors had collapsed where it passed through the center of the pavilion. The wards within the pavilion, Cruden and Chaucer had been destroyed in a fire which had also damaged the corridor. The next pavilion housed Dickins and Donne wards we headed inside and had a look around the usual array of day rooms, and dormitories. Up on the second floor in Donne ward it's long south facing day room was lined with a row of doors leading into seclusion rooms. Each of these had two glazed spy holes one at eye level and the other much lower down so that any one trying to hide below eye level could still be observed from out side the door. Donne ward was originally spread over the two upper floors of the three story pavilion on the first floor the doors had been lined with chipboard to give them a "modern" appearance but up on the second floor they were in their original condition, had the second floor been closed some time before the remainder of the ward.

Moving further around the along we reached Ellis Ward, one of the smaller pavilions which crossed the corridor. The doorway to the right hand section was advertising the "positive futures exhibition" I wonder if it was held to allay the concerns of the patients or the staff. We headed past Ellis and moved on to Faraday ward next door. Faraday was on the ground floor of another three floor pavilion, It was crowded with disused hospital equipment stacks of old beds were barricading the windows of it's large dormitory while unwanted cleaning and cooking equipment labeled with the names of half a dozen other wards was stacked in the center of the floor. In one corner of the ward one of its four large bay windows had been partitioned off to form an office, scattered across the floor were the redundancy consultation notices of staff who jobs ended with the hospitals closure.

Up stairs on the second floor was the Cane Hill school of nursing, Up here generations of staff received their training. The large ward space had been divided up into a series of class rooms. One of these still held a circle of chairs surrounding a blackboard displaying the induction program, It is strange to think of the last class of student nurses around this board, they must have been only too aware of the hospitals fate. In another class room there was a collection of Nursing times dating back to the seventies, the subscription appears to have expired in 1991.

Moving on from the school of nursing we continued around the wards of the female side. Heading past the small pavilion containing Guy ward. Until we reached the end of the semi circular corridor where it reached the first of the extension blocks built in 1888, the three story pavilion of Hill and Hogarth wards. We stopped off for a quick look around inside the wards passing through a familiar sequence of dormitory and dayroom before moving on. As we left the pavilion behind we didn't reenter the corridor system, a stairwell at the end of Hogarth ward up on the first floor was shared with the adjacent pavilion. Passing through the landing we emerged in Johnson Ward, It's shared dayroom and dormitory was empty except for a woven basket, we quickly moved through and headed towards the last of the pavilions on the female side the towering three floor Kings, Keats and Keller wards.

This pavilion was exactly the same layout as Hill and Hogarth but it contained one surprise for us, half way along the long corridor like day room of Kings ward was the old victorian mortuary trolley, It should have been in the mortuary building where it was used to transfer bodies to the chapel of rest. We later discovered it had been dragged up here by some amateur film makers a few nights before our visit. We left the block back on the ground floor where a corridor lead us towards the center of the hospital, All along this corridor there was a row of thick glass brick windows where the corridor ran along side Jenner Ward. We turned into the ward as a route back towards the main semi circular corridor, it was identical to Johnson ward above it. As we moved through the ward we noticed the the glass block windows looked into the ward's seclusion cells giving them very poor diffused light. heading out of Jenner ward we headed for the last ward block we would visit for a short while, following the corridor round a corner we found our selves at the stair way up to Lidget ward which had been the patient socialisation center during the last months of the hospitals life. The remains of a pool table still stood in the center of the ward, while the tattered remains of bright orange curtains flapped in the breeze. Patients would have whiled away the hours in Lidget playing games of pool, darts and participating in arts and crafts like knitting or jam making. Unfortunately the cues were gone so denied a game of pool we headed back down stairs and outside for a short while.

Taking a shortcut through the modern industrial kitchens tacked on to the back of the main building, we were soon back out in the fresh air and heading across the laundry yard towards the mortuary. The mortuary was housed in a stand alone building discretely hidden away next to the hospitals maintenance buildings. Given the sheer size of Cane Hill it's mortuary was also much larger than most other institutions. The single story structure was divided up into three rooms. We entered through the closest of these the mortuary chapel where bodies would be laid out for collection, the barest traces of its past still remained. The heart of the mortuary, the post mortem room lay in the center of the building. Dominated by its two ceramic mortuary tables, a few other remnants of its past remain such as the attendants boots and overcoats. The room was lit by oversized arched windows to provide the morticians more light to work. Beyond the post mortem room the final room held the mortuary fridges where bodies were stored while awaiting collection or burial.

Leaving the mortuary behind we headed back towards the main hospital buildings. We cut back across the laundry yard and entered the laundry itself. The main laundry room was a large single spanned hall, which still contained a row of oversized washing machines and a huge steam press for ironing the many bed sheets which would have been needed every day in a hospital of Cane Hill's size. Along side the laundry there were three small indoor drying rooms, separated in to small pens where the laundry could be hung up to dry. A raised platform in the center drying room lead us up to a raised wooden walkway which linked the laundry to the main buildings. This too had suffered in an arson attack, as we crossed it to re enter the hospital we were back out in the open. Once back inside we found ourselves a short way down the corridor from the "Top to Toe" boutique, with all the stock long gone we were only able to recognised it from the sign hanging above its open counter.

We then followed the corridor which runs along the back of the hospital following it round a few corners until we reached the first of the wards on the male side, Nightingale ward which was the socialisation center before it moved to Lidget. The ground floor was a simple large day room which was completely empty. It didn't take us long to look around as there was very little to see, But up on one of the walls there was a decorative frieze of cherubs the first sign of any original decorations we had seen in any of the wards. Back out on the corridor we turned another corner which took us to the Tailor's department where patients were employed producing clothing to be used around the hospital, It too was completely empty but one of the three rooms which made up the tailors was decorated with a mural of a steam train approaching down railway tracks.

We left the tailors department on the first floor landing between two of the ward blocks, To our right a short passage led to Zachary ward which had been closed since the 1960's. Looking in through the open ward door the floor looked far from safe so we didn't go in, Instead we found the stair way leading down and went to have a look in York ward on the ground floor. York had also been closed in the sixties and may have been used for storage since then. One of seclusion rooms still contained patient's suitcases left behind by their owners. York ward was right at the end of the male side of the semi circular corridor which would take us through the right hand side of the hospital. We passed the first pavilion and moved on towards it's slightly more interesting neighbour.

The next pavilion along had housed Vincent and Vanbrugh wards, and was a mirror image of the huge three floor pavilions on the female side of the hospital. It wasn't possible to visit the wards they had been destroyed in another of the frequent fires which have plagued Cane Hill since it closed. Back in 2003 a firework sparked off a fire which has gutted the pavilion, causing the floors on the upper floors to partially collapse. Although the damage is shocking to see the view we got up through shell of the pavilion exposed the construction methods used to build the pavilions the open spaces of the day rooms spanned with heavy iron cross beams propped up with slender pillars in the center of the room.

We continued round the main corridor passing the remaining male wards. We took a look in a few of the wards as we moved towards the front of the hospital, as they had closed before those on the female side they were a lot emptier and in a worse condition. When we reached the end of the right hand side of the semi circular corridor we turned off it and headed back towards the administration building, The corridor we were now walking down took us past the burned out remains of the recreation hall. It had been the social heart of the hospital but was now fire gutted, semi collapsed and chocked with tall weeds. Further along we reached the hospital pharmacy where the medications were stored and prepared. The room was divided up by a few work benches which were still cluttered with trays and pill bottles. Mounted on the far wall was a still for producing distilled water, and high up on a shelf the pharmacist's reference books from 1979 and 1980 were still waiting to be consulted. With the draws and cupboards hanging open the pharmacy did resemble the scene of a burglary but it was still one of the many places within the hospital where you could imagine people working just a few days before, not sixteen years.

The pharmacy sat along side our final stop of the day, the chapel. unlike many other asylums where the chapel was built apart from the main buildings, at Cane Hill it was right at the center of the hospital. The Chapel is very hard to describe and can only really be appreciated with your own eyes. Its yellow and red brick work forming patterns which in the early days must have been a rare splash of colour compared to the plain decoration of the wards. As a good Victorian establishment religion played an important part in the hospitals life, Church services at the chapel were well attended patients capable of leaving the wards. It also became a popular place for patients to meet with their visitors. The chapel remained an important part of the hospital right up until its final days on the 29th of February 1992 just one month before the hospitals closure it played host to service of thanksgiving for the life and work of Cane Hill Hospital.

Our time at Cane Hill was also coming to an end after eight hours of wandering its wards and corridors we made our way back to Blake ward where our journey began and headed out of the hospital and back down the foot path to Portnall's road.