Insane in the Membrane: The abandoned Hellingly Insane Asylum.

Anyone who knows me knows I love abandoned buildings.  There is an eerie beauty to their derelict and forgotten states. My friend Barrie and I went and photographed the abandoned Hellingly Insane Asylum.  This place is HUGE, comprised of a multitude of buildings sitting on 61 acres of land.  We were able to get in through the fence and went in the nearest two buildings to the entrance: the female chronic and epileptic blocks.  Much of the buildings were empty and we spent a good one and a half hours exploring these blocks.

We then spotted the ballroom / main hall across the yard but, in our attempt to get there, we were caught and told to leave the site by one of the construction workers.

I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to see this behemoth of a compound before it is completely torn down.

Hellingly Asylum opened in 1903.  This facility had it’s own railway line, boiler house and water tower, ballroom, and mortuary. Most of the hospital closed in 1994.  Since then, this 61 acre compound has sat rotting in a small town in East Sussex and is popular with graffiti artists, arsonists, photographers, and urban explorers.  Currently it is being demolished and salvaged for brick but as of Nov. 2010 a surprising number of the buildings still stand (at least from what we could see).