Field Report: Inside an Abandoned Asylum

Five AM. The morning was thick with dense fog as we snaked along quiet roads and cut through the dawn undetected. Adventure laid in wait. We had spent the previous week planning this. As the evening drew in we'd synchronised watches and tried to get an early night. We couldn't sleep and we found ourselves at the kitchen table pouring over maps and aerial photographs, blueprints and reports. Hell, we could have been Green Berets. Our schematics and our methods were immaculate.

We managed to get a few hours shut-eye before early morning roll call. We bundled out into the car and hit the road.

I remember the first time I'd even seen an Asylum in the flesh. Across a wooded valley on a summers day, set into a hillside that was just out of reach. Its imposing facade captivated me. The architecture was breathtaking and the scale was magnificent. Abandoned and alone, full of promise but so far out of reach. I'd been bitten by the bug. I was desperate to get inside one of these sleeping giants, to see what lied beyond the red bricks and high barred windows. Modern horror films had painted a grotesque picture of these places. Was this place really The House on Haunted Hill? I sort of hoped so. But I was young and I was naive.

At age 17 with a couple of friends we did make it to that Asylum. But we'd put it off too long. All that remained was the Admin block and the chapel. The rest had been bulldozed and the building that I saw from across the valley had been converted into luxury apartments. We did manage to get inside what remained and it was still incredible. Nervously we trod on soggy floor boards and climbed creaking stairs. There was still a lot to see but time was short and we were burning daylight.

I took to the internet and researched the great Asylums. Cane Hill, West Park, Cherry Knowle, Whittingham and Severalls. I was facinated by them, but I was even more facinated at the prospect of getting back on the wrong side of the bars. I didn't see myself as a rubber-necker, braking and swerving to bask in the misery of others. Yes, at times these places had brought a great deal of misery to a great deal of people but they also transformed the lives of many more and let them live out their lives in peace - on both sides of the gate. It wasn't the macabre that intrigued me, although I did take an interest in the patients that walked the halls of these once great hospitals. I wanted to see what others hadn't seen for 15 years, to experience what time can do to a place and to document it all.

Back in 2013 and as is always the case, we'd tweaked and tuned the finer points of the battle plan over a few beers the night before and my head was a little cloudy. Never the less, we pressed on into the first light and reached our destination a little earlier than planned. Its odd to see an Asylum in the middle of a suburban housing estate. Its almost as if its invisible. People go about their daily business and turn a blind eye to the monster behind the fence. Are they embarrassed by our history?

In the twilight mist and amongst the long dewey grass we stacked up along the perimeter fence of St. Johns Asylum, Lincoln. Make or break. As we sidled along, quiet as mice but giddy with anticipation our heads and our hearts raced. What (or who) were we going to find in there? Our questions were closer to being answered that we thought when we spotted a gap in the security fence and an open window. Fifteen seconds in no-mans land feel like a lifetime - thundering across open ground with no defilade and a clear line of sight on every side. We threw ourselves through the open window. As soon as my feet left the ground I realised I hadn't considered what was on the other side of that window. A 20 foot drop? A brick wall? A flooded basement? Shit.

I landed with a thud on a nice dry floor in a shaft of light in an other wise pitch black room. I heard the familiar sound of my comrade hitting the floor and his sigh of relief as he found himself alive albeit in total darkness. If this was a movie we'd be popping flares now. But it wasn't so I lit up the room with my torch - the corridor looked a mile long in the dark. Rooms branched off it and disappeared into the darkness.

I knew, from studying the blueprint of the place, roughly where we'd entered. I knew we were on the right hand side of the Super Intendants quarters. Gingerly we progressed up the corridor and after 30 feet the floor opened up leaving enough room on either side for each of us to make it to the end of the corridor. Many of the windows were boarded up and the breaking dawn shone in through the holes in the boards, shafts of amber light poured in and for a moment we were in our own personal Pantheon.

There was an element of 'spook' about this place, that was for sure. To my disappointment some parts of the beast were pretty stripped out and work was starting to get underway on renovation. Vast swathes of its wards still hadn't been touched though. Some rooms appeared as if the patients had just upped and left, others bled with decay. The rot had set in pretty bad. Floors were sodden and walls were crumbling. Paint peeled off ceilings and hung down like morbid bunting.

We walked the corridors and rooms as the sun came up. In a strange way it was beautiful. So peaceful and serene but tinged with a sadness the likes of which I have never experienced before. Doors slammed and the wind howled on the upper floors but we held our nerve and pressed on deeper into the heart of darkness. We peered into plunging lift shafts filled with acrid black water and thumbed through patient records in an office. We climbed the stairs to the roof and gazed on the imposing water tower. We trod the boards in the grand hall and we owned the place for the few hours that we were there. It's a strange feeling seeing the inside of an Asylum. Somewhere you shouldn't see, at least not in your right mind.

It wasn't Session 9. It wasn't horrifying or a freak show. It was brick and mortar, but it wasn't an empty shell - far from it. In contrast to how I had imagined it, it was a sad and hollow place. It was once a place of great comfort to those who needed it. It pioneered techniques and medicines that helped people to live a better life. It housed the incurable and it rehabilitated the sick. It wasn't what you see in the movies, it had often been a happy place. But in the early morning light, decades after its closure, it was a sad affair. For me, the children's ward was the worst part. Scratched deeply into a locked wooden door, in a shaft of dusty dawn light, a plea read 'God forgive us.' Time to leave.

It was getting light now and we had planned to be in and out before most of the surrounding houses woke up. A place like this needs more than two hours. It needed two days to see it all. We took in about half of it before we had to leave. We had over stayed our welcome and the streets beyond the fence were stirring. Footsteps up ahead in the corridor and the wailing of alarms and I gave the familiar order; run! Out of a window and over a first floor balcony. We hit the ground running, dressed in black and caked in plaster dust and hauling rucks. To the schoolgirls at the bus stop - the SAS were in town.

St John’s Asylum, Lincolnshire in the East of England was built 1852. It was designed to house just 250 patients but by 1902 the asylum grounds had grown to cover over 120 acres. The grounds of the asylum were cultivated by the inmates where they grew their own vegetables. Within the grounds was a cemetery for the hospital which covered 1.5 acres. The asylum finally closed its doors during December 1989 with all the patients being transferred to other nearby hospitals.

The site was then sold to developers who have converted a lot of the site into new housing.
All that now remains is the main asylum buildings which are Grade II listed and cannot be demolished. However work is now under way to convert the main buildings into apartments.