More than 100-years-ago Storthes Hall Hospital opened its doors for the first time, but what’s left is now in ruins.
Storthes Hall Hospital closed its doors in 1992, having been open for 88 years. Now, only the administration building remains, and The Tourist Historian decided to take a look inside.
His photographs reveal the building is in a very poor condition, with dust and dirt covering almost everything inside. The walls have been stripped of all decoration, with graffiti now lining the walls of the former mental hospital.
Old metal light switches have been covered in rust while control panels have been left behind. Surviving through the turbulent 20th Century, it’s no surprise to see elements of the many different periods the hospital stood through remain.
Inside Storthes Hall Hospital
(Image: The Tourist Historian)
As for the rest of the hospital, much of it was knocked down when the Storthes Hall Student Village was constructed. However, even this development is not immune to time, as the village closed down last summer.
For context, when Storthes Hall Hospital opened in 1904, King Edward VII, son of Queen Victoria, sat on the throne and the British Empire still ruled much of the world. Closing in 1992, it lasted through two World Wars and shut down just one year after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.
It was originally referred to as a ‘lunatic asylum’, but was renamed to Storthes Hall Mental Hospital in 1929 before becoming known as Storthes Hall Hospital when it became part of the NHS when it was formed in 1948.
Rust has set in inside Storthes Hall Hospital
(Image: The Tourist Historian)
The hospital was sadly not free from controversy, as it was investigated in 1967 about violent assaults with fists and weapons against patients committed by some of the nurses. It was also alleged that it was like Belsen, the Nazi concentration camp due to the brutality, but none of these allegations were ever proved.
One former nurse who worked in Storthes Hall during the 1970s, June Rawlinson, spoke to the Huddersfield Examiner in 2013 about her experiences there. About the patients, she said: “They had been there so long they had become institutionalised. They had no-one on the outside and nowhere to go – it was really sad. They would brew the tea and push a brush around.
“It had got to the stage where they didn’t know anything differently – that was their life.”
Storthes Hall Hospital
(Image: The Tourist Historian)
“They were given good care and had a good standard of living with entertainment too. There was a huge ballroom and they regularly had parties and tea dances.
“On the wards we put music on and would get the patients dancing or playing bingo. I think a lot were pretty happy with their lot.”
When Margaret Thatcher introduced Care in the Community, which was designed to save money by removing people from institutions and caring for them in their own homes, the hospital began to decline. This led in to its closure in the early 90s.
Now the building stands above Huddersfield, a reminder of the past and the people who live and worked there for much of their lives.
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