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Hensol Hospital first opened in 1930 as a colony for "colony for male mental defectives", three years earlier the Price family had sold the 1,105 acres of their Hensol Castle estate including the late seventeenth century manor house to Glamorgan County Council for £36,500 for use as a site for a planned county mental hospital. The mental deficiency act of 1913 made the County Council responsible for the provision of care for those deemed to be "mentally defective", It was recognised that these patients who suffered from learning difficulties, Downs Syndrome and Hydrocephalus etc. who typically found themselves in the workhouse would not receive the care and treatment they needed if they were moved to county asylum, and so separate dedicate institution was required. Glamorgan Council initially relied on the existing institutions the workhouse infirmaries at Ely and Cardiff and the cluster of Asylums at Bridgend but these provisions were far from suitable leading to the purchase of the Hensol Estate.
Similar Sites
Barrow Hospital
Highroyds Hospital
Mid Wales Hospital
North Wales Hospital
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The hospital opened with 100 male patients, accommodated within the Castle itself but work soon began on 6 villas and a recreation hall which raised the hospitals capacity to 460 patients when they were completed in 1935, the patients housed with in the new wards also now included women and children. Further plans to expand the hospital to a total capacity of 2,000 patients was postponed in the lead up to the second world war. Following foundation of the National Health Service in 1948 responsibility for the hospital passed from Glamorgan council to the new Welsh Hospital Board who abandoned the scheme to extend the hospital.
Further Expansion did take place in the 1950's when a further 3 villas were completed to raise the number of in patients to a total of 840, although the hospital was also responsible for many out patients released on licence. Attitudes to the treatment of people with learning difficulties and sufferers of conditions like downs syndrome changed throughout the 1960's with the implementation of a community based service. The Hospitals role developed from an isolated colony in the hub of the new community based service, a number of workshops and training centers where opened to teach patients the skills to survive and find employment in the wider community.
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The expansion of care in the initiatives lead to a gradual closure and resettlement program which saw the hospital finally close in 2004. The Hospital grounds were soon sold to a local business man how has converted the castle into a conference centre and has developed a health resort on part of the former hospital grounds. Most of the Modern buildings on the site have been cleared but the villas and hall have remained empty and boarded for the last three years.
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I made my first visit to the former Hensol hospital in the summer of 2007 in the company of Rookinella, it really does feel quite bizarre to be pull into the approach road of a multi million pound luxury hotel only to find it lined with abandoned and neglected hospital buildings. Even the road we were driving on was newly constructed a few feet lower down the banking on the right hand side of the road lies the original hospital road slowly being overrun by nature. As soon as we passed the first building i could recognised the work of Glamorgan's county architect William James Nash who was responsible for many of the public building built in the county during the 1930's including the school i attended. The pretty little stone villas shared many of their design features with my school the cast iron pillars and glass roves over the sun verandahs were exactly the same that lined the quads at my school.
We parked up in the hotels car park and tried to blend in with our camera amongst the golfers and gym goers as we made our way back on the approach road. As we got closer to the hospital buildings we agreed the main hall had to be our main priority so we headed directly towards it by passing some of the nearer ward villas. We quickly found an open window who's cast iron slats had clearly been cut away avoiding thick brambles and sharp edges on the window frames we quietly slipped unobserved into the basement of the Hall.
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The basement itself was rather under whelming just a lonely abandoned electrical generator quietly rusting away. in one corner a iron gate lead into the service tunnels we would return to these later but we came to see the main hall. a small flight of stairs lead up to a small closed door luckily this wasn't locked and some delicate finger movement allowed us to get enough of a grip to tease the door open revealing the untouched hall, Not knowing what we were going to find behind the door the orange decor was very exciting but not as much as spotting the impressive looking organ and projection booth at the far end of the hall. Our door had opened up below the stage and both quickly made our way out into the hall after making sure the cost was clear i made my way straight up one of the stairs leading to the projection booth but there was no access from within the hall but looking through the viewing hatches it was clear that the projection equipment had been removed. Then over to the other side where the impressive organ sat, it immediately became clear that the huge brass looking pipes were merely decorative and infact were not even made of brass at all, the actually organ pipes were smaller less impressive pipes hidden behind the facade.
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After making sure to take a group shot in the hall we went back down into the basement to take a look at the service tunnels, under the hall these were little more than crawl spaces lined with water, heating pipes and electrical cables flooded to a few inches after a quick look along one of the tunnels we decided to leave the hall behind.
The next stop was one of the original six 1935 villas, the three villas located across the approach road were all heavily boarded but the three villas on the far side of the main hall were completely open. All the villas are of a similar design a u shape with door ways at the ends of the two wings leading off a central block. On the ground floor the wings contained a series of individual rooms equipped as a nurses office, a small kitchen and wash room ect. while the main cross block formed a single day room opening out onto a sun verandah. Up stairs the layout was similar the wings contained bathing facilities and small individual bedrooms while the main block held two or three dormitories. We made out way through two of the 1935 Villas both of which were virtually identical and decorated in a range of calming pastel colour's, they were both in the early stages of being stripped ready for re use so little evidence of their original purpose remained. In one of the nurses offices large empty drugs cabinet was still secured to the wall and in the stairwells some of the radiators were still protected by metal grilles.
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The final building we visited was one of the later 1950's villas in side they were very similar to the earlier buildings still u shaped but a little larger they had an corridors running along the wings and central block connecting the the small individual bedrooms and the larger dormitories. After visiting this final ward and seeing both styles of villa we decide to make our way back across to the car park to find the cars has turned into ovens while we were away.
My second visit to hensol came a few weeks later with Zippy and Explorette we also headed straight for the main hall after a quick look around we slipped out of a fire escape making sure it was securely closed behind us. We then headed off towards the villas this time we headed to the eastern set of villas which i hadn't visited on the previous trip. The first villa we entered was another of the 1935 originals and it to was in a similar condition to the villa's i had seen previously stripped out and awaiting conversion in one of the day rooms a pile of roof mounted radiators were stacked up awaiting removal. After checking the interior of the villa we headed down into the basement below which had signs of coal boilers now long gone, a service tunnel ran off towards the villas other wing and emerged in a similar basement below that wing. It seems all of the villas had there own independent heating and services instead of being linked to a central boiler house.
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The very next villa we checked out proved to be far more complete and interesting than all of the others i had previously visited. This ward also seemed a little more secure than the others, In the nurses offices the electricity supply to each of the patients individual bedrooms could be shut off by the turn of a key in a control panel and the power points in each room were secured by wooden locked boxes so they could not be tampered with. Most interesting was a door labeled seclusion room, which led into a small bedroom whose walls were lined by several layers of limo giving the walls a soft spongy effect. Although this was by no means like a traditional padded cell it would have provided the rooms occupant some protection from bangs against the walls.
Finally we stopped off in one of the older wards along the approach road these wards although boarded up were completely stripped back to the bare walls inside even the parquet flooring had been lifted awaiting the buildings conversion to its future use. I was glad to get the opportunity to visit what remained of the Hospital although it would have probably been best to see it one or two years before.