Looks like the vestry door...where's the vicar?

The perspective here is awesome. The height of the ceiling vs the narrowness of the hall. Makes you dizzy. Looks like where they'd stash the staff, really. We always get the arse end of the building and offices the size of the john.

What a magnificent name for an asylum. Gravesend. Almost as good as Hellingsley Asylum. Wouldn't you think someone would have a wee think about that before they hung the shingle out? Bless them...

actually, I'm struck by the modernity (did I just make up a word?) of the chair and the intact paint job on the walls.

If it was the nurse unit managers office the stains on the wall were probably from spitting at the administrator after he/she left the room...

Somehow I get a clear image of that door slamming shut after you if you were a poor nurse on night shift. Always waiting for it to happen, but it never does... I really should become a florist...

Who had the contract for this place? The local high school? Well, I never...

Given the institution, I would assume that suction would be kept at hand for those with cerebral palsy or muscular distrophy or having an epileptic seizure. It's used to suck saliva and vomitus from the mouth if the client is indisposed.

Well said, nevermore. Well said. I too would like to see the nose back on the hanging garden of babylon and I think it's a crying shame so much brilliant design work is going under the wrecking ball in the uk and the usa. We here have nothing of historical value except the laws of our parliament, therefore nothing worth salvaging really.

...besides these old buildings are great - you can play cricket in the hallways and volleyball in the middle of the wards when the patients get bored and admin have gone home...

Exquisite. An historical beauty the likes of which will never be seen again. And no, that's not necessarily a good thing. If you ask enough psych patients if de-institutionalisation was the better option, you'll find that there's a case for being under a solid roof for the night with food and reliable starched nurses with a regular routine and someone to help you with symptomatic relief when things got a bit ragged. Yes, there's nasty stories, but so are there today about elder care, and more than half of it is B.S.

This is divine and beautiful. How could they leave these places empty and derelict? (where's my soapbox, would someone pass me....over there...thanks), i can't believe that in the UK and USA there are so many magnificent heritage buildings that are crying out to be rebuilt as museums or funky co op housing or nursing homes or scientology headquarters (sorry...) it's not as though they were surgical buildings with heaps of golden staph infecting the floorboards. If I get 'JK Rowling' wealthy I'm gonna buy me one and live like an eccentric. Viva the kirkbride, viva the asylum! I'll get down now, shall I?...

Our morphine/oxycontin/dilaudid etc drugs are schedule 8 drugs (S8) kept in locked safes. Maybe S1 drugs in the UK are cytotoxics like chaemo or opiates like our S8's are. Any UK nurses out there?

Oh, yum. Look at that widows walk. Or pseudo ww really, i suppose it's for decoration.

Yukky yukky yukky. It does look like a forensic wing. How draconian. Danvers rules, anyway.

Maybe X's tag areas that have had the fixtures and fittings removed. I have seen this in old prisons here in Australia. When they remove the furniture and handles and copper piping (which is expensive) they tag it as stripped.

Aaah, when there's life in a building, it's just another nursing home full of elderly folk. After they've gone, the myths and legends and gossip starts. When I clean out the drawers at work I find pics like this of our dearly departed. We all do a fond "hey, remember this guy...?" and then we stash the pics somewhere else. It seems like bad karma to throw them out. Probably fell on the floor when they were moving the furniture out.

Thanks Mr Motts for clarifying that. I got all excited for a moment... The lighting is magic. I have just seen the DVD here in Australia (Session 9), a friend bought it for me for Xmas because I rave about your photography. She got sick of me saying all thru the movie "but Mott's lighting is sooooo much more atmospheric!! " Anyway, suffice to say the psych nurses here in Australia love your work. Bless.

Navi and Long Island Irish, the coffin liner in this day and age is metal, used for vault burials, and when transporting a casketed body or putting someone with an infectious disease in the ground. The concrete liner would be the grave liner itself into which the coffin is lowered. For a coffin of this age, maybe the liner was another simple wooden box, or could have been metal sheeting.

So, is that a shadow ghost, or part of the movie or a trick of the lighting???

Doesnt look like a hydro tub to me. Just looks like a normal tub and shower. Hydro tubs of that era usually had like a headboard attached with various gauges and dials, and a fixation point for canvas sheeting over the top.