| St John's Hospital | Lincoln | A last look?... Possibly not just yet.

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Known by many names throughout the decades - The Lincolnshire County Pauper Lunatic Asylum and Bracebridge Heath Mental Hospital (to name a few incarnations) is a 120 acre hospital site, currently being both renovated and demolished after some thirty-odd years of being abandoned. The new housing development is sympathetically restoring and repurposing what can be saved of the site's many buildings, while some of the structures and original floors beyond saving are being demolished. Work is progressing quite quickly now, so this might be the site's final months standing with its history still present. UPDATE: Since publishing the video and the lockdown occurring, it's likely that the site work is going to take longer than expected. It may well be around for quite some time yet!

Here is a brief and atmospheric look at some of the remaining highlights of the site, with the edit trying to evoke the various feelings we got from this place; A resigned peacefulness, a timeless boredom, a quaint Italian-harbour vibe in the sunshine, the dour and vaguely sinister feel of the cells and the very curious feeling (for urban explorers!) when you just know its time to leave...

St John's is somewhat unusual looking to most 19th century asylums due to the Italianate architectural style and the warm blue-sandstone used instead of brick or dark stone. When the sun shines and you use your imagination, parts of it do look rather look and feel like an abandoned port/harbour building by the sea. However, despite the warm and romantic look to the buildings with their airy corridors and elegant vaulted ceilings, this was an apparently a very gloomy place to work and be committed to, in contrast to the more dour-looking nearby Rauceby asylum. Because of the cheerful looking buildings I was expecting this place to be somewhat fondly remembered, because some places seem to be genuinely lamented when they closed (Severalls, for instance).

It's a real tragedy that these places have become so loaded with social stigma and troubled patient experiences because these institutions had a lot of very obvious (and expensive) care and attention put into their original design and construction. The early decades for hospitals like St. Johns seem to be when the (albeit flawed) vision of providing care for the mentally ill was at its purest and most well-thought out, before overcrowding, mis-management and over-reliance on draconian medical procedures clouded that vision in the 20th century.

Ultimately, I don't think any asylums existed that ultimately managed to escape the controversies and failures, no matter how fondly the staff remembered them or how well designed they were for the times they were built in.

More detailed information on this historic institution (and others) can be found at:

Music is from the film Gone Girl, by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.