The Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton.

The Royal opened its doors in 1849 as the result of a joint £1,000 initial donation made by two local businessmen and later the hospital was designed and built to a decorative Italian renaissance style which has lost none of its ‘Roman-rooted’ impact to this day.

The hospital in its formative years interestingly brewed its own beer and ales which were to be accompanied with the staff’s lunch.

My exploration here was tense and claustrophobic, perhaps because of the chaotic enclosed internal renovations which meant that most areas were essentially ‘one way streets’. This site also backs onto a red-light district and with a complete lack of any security presence I decided to air on the side of caution.

The hospital closed in 1997 and the site was sold of to Tesco Superstores, services have since been relocated to the New Cross hospital a few miles away.