During planning and construction this site was known as the Eleventh London County Asylum,
though due to changes by the time of it's opening, around 1921, it bore the title of
Mental Hospital and not Asylum. West Park is a site that over the past three
years, 2003 - 2006, has gone from being a location for noobs to cut their exploring teeth,
to a very highly secured site.
Over those three years we paid numerous visits to the site, in part as it's real close by,
but also because I particularly enjoyed just wandering around the place. It's a vast complex
with something for everyone, from the heights of the water tower to the depths of the service subways.
West Park is also renowned for being one of the few hospital locations to have an intact seclusion room, though at some
point the brass spy hole surround, pictured below, was pilfered. There's way too much to try to recall about
our numerous trips, but suffice to say after our last visit we felt we'd pretty well crawled, climbed and wandered,
everywhere we'd wanted to.
For something more interactive click through to more and check out the West Park panoramas.
