Here is a video of photos i took on my recent visit to Leybourne Grange Mental Asylum. The site is only 10 minute drive from my house and is very interesting. The whole place has a very eerie feel to it and from what I read this was the case when it was in use also.
Here is a bit of History on the Hospital.
Located beside the M20 near Maidstone, sits a large 270 acre plot of land, very well hidden by trees. The trees are said to have been used to oxygenate the air making a better environment for the patients of Leybourne Grange Hospital. The hospital which once accommodated for a huge 1200 patients is now disused and left to decay. Some parts of the hospital have been demolished since it shut in 1996. The hospital had opened in 1936 and was used for sixty years. Also located on the site is a beautiful manor house. The hospital was built as a colony for mental defective persons by Kent county council utilising an existing estate and the manor house. In 1948 the National Health Service took ownership of Leybourne grange and it became known as a subnormality hospital for the mental and handicap. The site now sits dead and lifeless. The grounds are beautiful and would make a great national park but instead there is planning permission to build 700 new houses and convert the manor house. Some of the buildings had been demolished on this visit and all had been pretty stripped but there is still around 6 buildings standing, the main two being the manor house and the nursing block. There is also a very impressive clock tower.
From what I’ve read on varies website some patients there were mistreated. One example of this is a nurse who handcuffed patients to the radiators and left them for hours. Also a lot has been mentioned of patients going missing under “unexplainable” circumstances. I have read a lot about the basement area of the manor house about patients being locked in there and not always coming back out. Construction workers who are on site at the moment have said to seen ghost, so much so they have named one.
I have another better quality video with a different sound track on Vimeo. Unfortunaly wordpress doesn’t support there coding though so follow the link bellow.
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