Harold Wood Hospital

Harold Wood hospital opened to patients in 1909 and was named The Grange Convalescent Home for Children. The hospital’s admin building was originally built in 1884 by John Compton to serve as a private house for the Gubbins Estate. During WWII the building was put to use as an emergency hospital, then later expanded to become a District General Hospital during the 1960s. The hospital has been derelict since 6 December 2006 when remaining patients and staff were forced to relocate to King George’s and Queens Hospitals in London.

The condemned buildings which remain bear silent witness to the tide of unskilled and reckless copper thieves who have left large areas of the site ravaged; piles of unwanted piping and debris have accumulated like so much flotsam and jetsam along the hospital’s dank corridors.

The entire visit was tense, unnerving and now and again I could hear strange and irregular noises, sounding sometimes muffled and distant yet other times close enough to be just two rooms away. But the exploration died a quick and painful death when two heavily-built men walked swiftly in my direction from the far end of a corridor. Without a second glance and having no idea whether or not they had seen me, I fled down one of the wards like a bat out of hell and just managed to exit via an unlocked window.

Hours later, over a triple shot macchiato, I wondered who the two men were and what they could have been doing there; thankfully I didn’t find out the hard way.