Abandoned Asylum Hospital. Thorpe St Andrew. Norwich, Norfolk.

#abandoned #asylum #norwich Built in around 1881 on the site of a cricket ground and known as St. Andrews Asylum Annexe these buildings were part of a separate auxiliary asylum for the main Asylum which was several hundred yards to the south of this site which can still be seen in it’s entirety, although now converted into residential properties. The buildings were to be of ‘somewhat plain, simple and comparatively cheap construction’, later described as ‘a sort of go-between the Asylum and the Workhouse’. Designed by the architects Cornish and Gaymer, they were modelled on Metropolitan Asylums Board institutions at Leavesden and Caterham. They comprised a two-storey ‘H’ shape with large and rather barn-like male and female wards linked, or rather separated, by an administrative cross-section, behind which lay a single storey complex of kitchens and staff rooms. Costing £33,920, they accommodated 250 patients, two and a half times the original capacity. ‘Chronic lunatics, imbeci