This has the feel of an incredibly detailed pencil sketch about it. The sky is fantastic. I soooo want this pic for my bedroom wall.

We don't have water towers like that in the UK. If we did, I could well imagine associating them with watch-towers or similar....

I don't know why, but this one looks rather creepy.

Another fantastic post by Lynne. It seems that people assume that the ECT, chemical coshing' and neglect of their worst institutional nightmares still goes on, even in the modern age of human rights lawyers and formal, written procedures for everything.

All through my school years we were expected to take communal showers in a room very similar to this following games (physical ed) lessons. No-one ever called these dehumanising or exploitative, despite the fact that at 14 or 15 years old we were seeing one another as naked as the day we were born. And as far as I know they are still in use to this day.

Frequently the showers were cold because the education authority that funded the school couldn't afford to heat the water. No word of a lie. And a good friend of mine who was, erm, rather larger than average (about 25 stone, or so he later told me) was often on the end of abusive and foul-mouthed comments from other students. He sucked it in and dealt with it. Wrong of course, but certainly not unusual.

My point being that if they could 'subject' a load of 15 year-olds to this just a decade ago, is it so terrible that it happened in psychiatric establishments?

Motts, thank you so much for that link about UK asylums. I share Chocobo's gratitude. In my experience, and as I've said before, anything that becomes obsolete or surplus to requirements here tends to be torn down long before it has chance to decay and becomes interesting, due to ridiculous land values and Government policy which insists on the re-use of any piece of 'brown-field' land for hundreds of overpriced shoe-box apartments. I had no idea that any of this stuff had survived... my Mom told me childhood stories of poking around a vast abandoned institution near Warrington, but that has long gone and only the water tower remains.

I've become fascinated by the idea of exploring derelict asylums, since ours were once possibly even more ornate, more impressive, and more brutal than those in the US, particularly during the early 20th century. The stories are heartbreaking - of girls committed to these places for the 'crime' of falling pregnant, or suffering from autism, epilepsy or any number of now-managable conditions. It was very easy to end up in the 'looney bin' and never see the light of day again. Even though most of them are down South, far away from my city, I'm encouraged by their mere existence and may even be tempted to pay a visit.. My interest in UE was sparked by a 'mission' (with a friend) to the abandoned BBC TV headquarters in Leeds city centre before that too was reduced to rubble. We had an amazing time snooping around recently vacated newsrooms and TV / radio studios and I hope t enjoy many more such experiences. Thanks a million for this site, and for helping fire my interest and stimulate my imagination...

My father used to sell mimeograph machines to local education authorities in the days before schools could afford photocopiers. The smell of the ink was lovely... I remember getting the blue print all over my hands when our class teacher gave us worksheets that weren't quite dry :-)

I think we may still even have a couple of these machines (more modern, mid-80s versions of course) lying around in the garage or basement! Incidenally my old man moved on to selling photocopiers and laser printers as each subsequently superseded older technology...

Sallie, I don't think Pennhurst was ever a beautiful place. The structures themselves look wonderful but inside I think it truly was the 'pit of despair'.

Check out El Peecho's Pennhurst site for some rather disturbing images of what it looked like in use (late 70s).

This conjures up so many images... Frankenstein's laborotory, yes, or a scene from a retro-futuristic Gotham-type city, or maybe a temple... to the God of Electricity perhaps....

Those lamp posts are incredible either way.

This probably has to be my favourite image so far. The eye is inescapably drawn to the yawning hole surrounded by twisted vines and flanked by two seriously scary lamp supports... you can almost imagine them festooned with buzzing, sparking cables and old-fashioned insulators, gearing up to deliver thousands of crackling volts for some freakish experiment...

Odd how the bridge is off-centre - this would be pure Art Deco symmetry otherwise.

Yep, I'm from the other side of 'the pond' Lynne. I think "rotten as a pear" comes from the fact that pears do spoil pretty quickly if left lying around. I'm gussing there mind. And I never realised how many phrases and sayings don't make it to the US until I started seeing a girl from Boston... the poor lass is constantly confused by my somewhat odd way of putting things lol...

Definitely toasted!

What a fantastic post. Applause indeed!

Lynne, you have done much to educate me and other visitors to this site, to help remedy exactly the kind of ignorance you refer to. The institutional pictures touch me not in the manner of a cheap, horror movie full of cliche torture devices and mad doctors, but because of their associations with real people, all now long departed but whose stories need to be told. Your matter-of-fact explanations of the practices and equipment of the hospitals are the perfect accompaniment to the images, in many ways more disconcerting (the stories of understaffing and changing attitudes for instance) than anything one's imagination could associate with a rusted crib or abandoned ECT machine. I'd never thought of institutions as a microcosm of society, but of course they are. After all, there but for the grace of God (or an accident of birth, depending on one's theological outlook) goes ever one of us.

People have asked about a book or calendar - either way i know it would be incomplete without your explanations, maybe even a foreword... :-)

OMG...

Never mind the mushy floor, it's the scary buckled wall that's presumably holding up the entire weight of the roof that's freaking me out...

I hope you didn't feel the need to cough or sneeze in this building Motts...

It is, I agree, pretty damn cool.

I wonder if it served a religious function? (More plausible than a ballroom perhaps, and the stained glass is another clue...)

I'm guessing now. Could have been anything.

I hope you didn't even think of walking on any of these floors...

Don't try this at home kids... all urban exploration on this site was carried out by trained professionals :-)

Jeez.

The phrase 'rotten as a pear' springs to mind...

This place is in pretty bad shape.

I'm also of the opinion that it's immensely disrespectful to destroy these places. They should be venues for eye-opening exploration and maybe sombre reflection, but certainly not for wild parties and drug-fuelled vandalism. People might actually learn something if they weren't so keen to smash up sanitaryware and tag every available surface.

Of course, that kind of destruction also results in increased security because of the potential for injury lawsuits etc, making it more difficult for genuine explorers to gain entry, as well as the damage and destruction making theeventual re-use of the building that much more uneconomic...

Wow - this is amazing. I have to say that if I was wandering around an abandoned building and found a room with all the lights on and a computer ready to go, I'd probably get the hell out, in case someone came back...

How weird that this is still lit up as if for a normal working day. I can understand battery-powered emergency exit markers staying lit years after the building crumbles around them, even fluorescent tubes still connected to a supply in a still-inhabited hospital campus, but this is just too weird for words.

How long has the building been derelict?

Closeby there are other comments on this site from people who also worked at Pennhurst and claimed it wasn't all that bad. Maybe the word 'worked' is important here. it would be interesting to know the truth about the place but if a court case and God-only knows how many testimonies couldn't uncover it, maybe it will never be fully known.

The thought that some of the people in the place were 'fully-functioning' is very scary and depressing - even if it was the happiest institution on earth surely they shouldn't have been there! But I've heard it was once not so difficult to get a badly-behaved child or an oddball teenager sent to one of these places.

Perhaps this place should not be bulldozed for a parking lot or a Walmart, but be opened to the public as a museum and memorial, a reminder of terrible times past. And maybe, as Lynne has said, a section on modern standards of care and techniques should be included - to make it clear that this place represents a period in history and not the way things are done now... but also as a warning as to the results of a lack of funding and unhealthy social attitudes towards those who are different and feared.

Haha it does look like a light fitting -but it's kinda, erm, in the wrong place :-)

Heheh Lynne I see what you mean.

Mighty funny place for a light fixture :-D

Thanks for clearing that up!

This is a fantastic set. I've always been fascinated by shipping. Dead ones are not something us landlubbers often get to see at close quarters.

I was fascinated by this page:

http://members.aol.com/ssus2/more3.html

It would be so cool to see your take on a really, REALLY big wreck, like this one...

100 years old! Makes me wonder if this ever tugged anything glamorous in her day - the Titanic or Queen Mary for instance? To think she's probably been sitting there for a good proportion of that time too...

These tugs are a sad sight - I've seen pictures of really big ships abandoned or awaiting scrapping, which are sombre in themselves, but somehow little tugboats are 'cute' in a way that no liner or frieghter can ever be.

I'd love to see shots of an airplane graveyard. Though I can't imagine that in the post 9/11 paranoia, they're especially easy to gain access to, and I suppose if you were caught sneaking around one you'd be looking at a lot more than a telling-off from a security guard.

Here's a couple I found:

http://www.modern-ruins.com/ruins/boneyard/
http://www.surrealcoco ... herncal/mojave.htm

Wow Bakelite city!

I wonder how old it is? It reminds me of a book I read as a child on the discovery of the Titanic, which had boilers just like this one (as did most turn-of-the-century ocean liners).