THE HAUNTED BANGOUR VILLAGE AND ASYLUM This abandoned asylum was one of Britain’s first villa-style psychiatric hospitals - but since closing down 10 years ago, it is now a mess of crumbling brick walls and haunting empty corridors. Bangour Village Hospital, near Dechmont in West Lothian, opened in 1906 for Edinburgh’s lunatic paupers, and for almost 100 years housed patients with mental health problems from across Central Scotland. But after St John’s Hospital opened in nearby Livingston in 1989, it was slowly shut down, and in 2004 the last remaining ward was closed. Today, it is a relic of its former past, and its Grade A-listed buildings leave a chill down your spine as you walk around the 960 acre estate. Built on the Bangour Estate, which was bought by the Edinburgh District Lunacy Board (EDLB) in 1902, it was set up as a new style of psychiatric hospital based on the Continental Colony system. The revolutionary design saw 32 villas created in the style of suburban domestic villas, with large bay windows and south-facing public rooms to bring in the most light. Each could house between 25 to 40 patients with the non-medical staff separated by a complex of workshops, stores, a kitchen, and the main hospital block.Bedrooms were also situated upstairs in an attempt to try and move patients away from the typical stresses and difficulties of institutional life. By the end of 1905, there were up to 200 patients in residence at the facility, and recently it was discovered that 566 patients had been buried in unmarked graves in nearby cemeteries. In 1915, the hospital was requisitioned by the Army for military use, and with added temporary marquees, housed more than 3,000 wounded servicemen by 1918. The influx of soldiers meant that patients with mental disorders were displaced from the site and relocated to other asylums across Scotland. In 1922, it reopened as a psychiatric institution and a Village Church was built to mark its reuse and serve as a war memorial. Following the outbreak of World War II, the complex was turned into the Edinburgh War Hospital in 1939 with a large annex built to increase its capacity. Strange voices, moving furniture, and doors closing and pushing against you have been reported along with ghost children and nurses. During the 1930s, Bangour became a tuberculosis sanatorium with the fresh air and food from its own home farm being vital to patients’ recuperation. The last patients left the hospital in 2004, just under a century after the first arrived, and in 2005 the complex was used as a location for the psychological thriller film, The Jacket, starring Keira Knightley, Adrien Brody and Daniel Craig.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 11:30:41 +0000
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