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Great Britain - Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot, November 2022 | Oblivion State Urban Exploration

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Great Britain Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot, November 2022

KPUrban_

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Heatherwood Hospital - Ascot - November 2022

With patient admissions beginning from 1922 the Heatherwood Estate Hospital would grow from a specialist children's hospital to a small sprawling mass of a district hospital with financial strain seeing a decline from 2010 until its' full replacement in 2022. The scatter of buildings is easily distinguishable from above with a web of sheltered external pathways connecting numerous wards of differing ages and designs which has seen little trespassing activity since closure.

The background

Information Sources: http://www.heatherwoodhistory.org.uk/hospital01.html

Heatherwood has sat decaying on the list of potential visits for a while now with very little motive to be visited.
Sitting in a McDonald's car park with the day still ahead of us both myself and Xplorer.X were scouring our minds for something we could take a look through before going home.
Eventually we settled on Heatherwood as it was a shot in the dark and we had some hope of operating theatres, X-Rays, MRI rooms and other medical goodies which could easily be dated back to the 1960s.
We hit the road, and traffic, for an hour or so before accepting the fate of paying for hospital parking and taking an on foot patrol at what appeared to be a building already past its' prime. As we walked past the front a trio of occupied dog vans had aimed themselves to the buildings with a lot of doors prized open in their sights.
Since the former estate expands across a sizable area there were a fair few easy vantage points to get within and exploit which saw us inside within no time.

Heatherwood hospital can trace its' route back to the purchase of Heatherwood House Estate in 1919 by the United Service Fund who intended for the estate house to become a treatment centre for children of service members with admissions accepted from 1922 and an official opening ceremony taking place a year later.
Initially the facility would be able to accommodate up to 136 patients with specialist treatment in Tuberculosis (TB) across three wards divided to female, male and older children.

For the first years the hospital would remain under the USF until it was eventually handed to the London County Council in 1932 who saw the need to extend the hospital estate with additions to the nurses home and new wards before eventually designating the hospital as a specialist for young persons with Tuberculosis providing surgical treatments as well as schooling for patients. The treatment of TB at the time influenced the open design of the facility with large gardens and activities thought as an effective means to cure the illness.
By 1937 the hospitals' capacity had increased to almost 190% of the original capacity which, on cue for WW2, saw patients numbers temporarily raised with adults also accepted into the wards.

As the formation of the NHS took hold of British healthcare, Heatherwood would soon find itself under the Windsor Hospital Management Group and as cases of tuberculosis fell, Heatherwood would soon start to form itself as a district general and orthopaedics hospital. Further expansions in the 60s would see improved operating theatre facilities and physical therapy departments along with a minor accidents department and then later additions to the children's departments.
1971 saw the opening of the largest structure on site, the three storied maternity department with a capacity of 75 beds.
Post 1970's growth of the hospital paused with the only new addition being a mental health department in the mid 80's, with most funding going into upkeep of the structures.

The 1990's began to the decline and change of the hospitals' services with the children's ward closing to a day unit only in 1994 and the ground floor specialist baby unit being replaced with a new diagnostic centre.
As the 2000's rolled in services were still being shuffled around the hospital, minor injuries would later join the diagnostic centre on the ground floor of the maternity block with an MRI scanner installed a few years later to adjoin these services. By 2010 four wards had become vacant along with a handful of the hospital's services which began to move elsewhere.

Throughout the 2010s funding and the nature of the hospital soon saw maternity, minor injuries, mental health and a handful of supporting wards closed to service. As the 2016 rolled in Frimley Health announced plans to build a replacement hospital alongside the existing buildings and once complete to close the almost 100 year old facility. March 2022 Heatherwood hospital had closed after the final departments relocated.

The Visit

We began in the rear-most building which was home to post-operation orthopaedics and staff training wards although quickly headed towards the central areas of the site.

As our visit was fairly rushed neither of us opted to deploy our tripods and only I decided to whip out the mighty Nikon for a few manual hand-held shots whilst desperately needing a p!ss after chugging several monsters and trying to remember where I had misplaced my wallet.

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Maternity and most of the 1970's ward structure.
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The Chapel
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Corridors
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Physiotherapy
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Most of the original wards
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Pathology
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Anyways, that'll be all.
I'm still annoyed I missed the Operating Theatres.

KP_
 
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