St. Crispins Asylum (County Asylum) - St. Crispins - Northampton

St Crispins was a large mental hospital on the outskirts of Duston in Northamptonshire, England. It was established in the 1876 as the Berrywood Asylum. It closed in 1995 and its grounds are being developed into a new mental hospital, set to open in May 2010.

Following the closure of St. Crispin's Asylum, the main building was left abandoned for a number of years and became neglected and prone to vandalism and arson which destroyed the roof of the recreation hall. Some buildings within the grounds, notably those connected with the Princess Marina Hospital remained in use, as well as the staff social club and bowling green. The former chapel is now in use for religious purposes by the Greek orthodox religion and dedicated to St. Neophytos. The chapel and former isolation hospital are both listed at Grade II and to be incorported within the new development, The bell tower will remain and be put under restoration.

The main building itself is currently undergoing conversion to private residential use with the retention of the original male and female blocks, tower, administration block, superintendent's house and children's block being retained. Elsewhere within the grounds, the former stables and nurse's home have also been refurbished. Other later buildings and service areas have been cleared. The Pendered Centre, formerly the admission hospital, continues in use for local mental health services although the neighbouring convalescent villas have been demolished. New housing was developed on the site of staff housing and football grounds to the east of the admission hospital around 1993, although a group of early houses survive on the main road. Further housing has since been developed on open land to the west as well.

By 1884, and completed 1887 further extensions took place, creating a new block for idiot and imbecile children adjacent to the female wing, blocks for epileptics on either side, a resevoir and fire station, stable yard and an isolation hospital with a distinctive pyramidal roofline. A stone chapel and mortuary were also constructed.

With the onset of World War I, the institution accommodated some of the inmates evacuated from the Norfolk County Asylum, until 1916, when Berrywood was also turned over to war use and its own population distributed across East Anglia and the East Midlands. As the Duston War Hospital, the asylum was put to extensive use for military cases being treated and recovering from injury. Many images survive of the hospital during this period of use. However, peace brought a return of the building and a return of its patient population. A change of name from asylum to mental hospital was to mark another period of growth and during the 1930's, extensions took place. These took the form of a new nurse's home, refurbishment of some of the staff residences, a new admission hospital (now the Pendered Centre) with two villas for male and female convalescent patients, sited on an adjacent site, away from the main complex.

Following World War II, ownership of the site passed to the National Health Service and the hospital, then known as St. Crispin, reached it's highest number of occupants. Two new villas for female working patients (Grafton and Eden Lodges)were constructed south of the female wing in 1954. The grounds to the south of the hospital farm was developed for mental handicap services during the early 1970's and was to be one of the last major long stay facilities of it's kind in England. Named the Princess Marina hospital, it provided a home for a number of Northampton patients previously resident at Bromham Hospital in Bedfordshire and although adjacent to St.Crispin, it was located within the Upton parish and access from the south. Kent Road, a drive which had pre-existed the new hospital was retained and adapted as the main access route, with an entrance off road to the south. Some facilities, particularly the laundry, were centralized and expanded at St. Crispin. A social club for staff was sited close to a remodeled entrance onto Berrywood Road.

THIS COLLECTION INCLUDES PHOTOS FROM THE TOP OF THE BELL TOWER & FARM COMPLEX!

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Northampton Cattle Market - Brackmills - Northampton (DEMOLISHED)

Operators of the Northampton Cattle Market say the market at Brackmills has been losing thousands of pounds a month since reopening in February 2002 after the foot-and-mouth epidemic. Local farmers mounted a campaign to raise the £2m needed to buy the market and run it themselves. But, managing director of Northamptonshire Auctions plc Keith Rose said: "It's just that this market cannot operate with these overheads - we've got to close."

The livestock market shut on 31st October 2002, and reopen the next day in Market Harborough.


Since the closure in 2002, The Cattle Market has became a huge hotspot for graffiti artists, from a distance you would not even realize that the building is abandoned, however once inside the calf sale ring you understand how long it has been left for. We went on from the Sale ring into the auction room, however inside the building has no sign of art or graffiti, but instead minor fire damage, general damage and minor drug use. One room has a larger scale of fire damage to walls and celings however is still accessable. Rooms include, the main auction room, cafe, animal storage room for livestock and other storage rooms, the building is all on ground floor level and does not have any other floors or basement.

The building is well worth a visit if you enjoy seeing proper graffiti art and old agricultural history. Like always do take care when visiting sites as vandals and junkies do tend to use these sites for other reasons, this site does have signs of possible parties that have gone on as one room is absolutely full of cans of beer and cider, there is also a huge industrial skip full of alcohol etc.

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LIVE: Northampton Fish Market Urban Display

If you are Northampton local you will deffinatly know about or where the Fish Market is, once a live market selling both fish and meat. The Northampton Fish Market is now home to an Art Gallery. Inside there is a small section set out for Graffiti and Cartoon Artists in Northampton.
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YMCA Parent Centre - Northampton

This building was known as the "YMCA Parents Centre" which was located on Cheyne Walk which is in Northampton town center. This centre offered a variety of servises that help promote a positive family and there relationships, It is one of the largest providers of childcare and school-based iniatives.

Now the building is more or less an empty shell, used by local skaters and also by local graffiti artists. The building is opposite the NHS General Hospital and Beckets park. There is no story about why this building no longer exists so the only reasons could have been that there was a lack of funding for the area or the building contained dangerous substances such as asbestos.

YMCA England supports and represents the work of 135 YMCAs providing professional and relevant services that make a difference to the lives of young people in over 250 communities. The YMCA reaches out to over 1 million young people each year, working with them at every stage of their lives and offering support when and where they need it most. Founded over 160 years ago, the YMCA in England builds on a long history of providing a place for young people to find acceptance, community and activity.

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Nunn Mills Power Station - Northampton - Incomplete

Nunn Mills power station is an old disused and gutted power station in Northampton, the River Nene runs along its northern boundary whilst an infrequently used rail freight line, together with disused tracks and siding marks the southern boundary of the site.

Further south, beyond the railway, is Delapre Abbey, which is set in an area of recreational parkland that includes a number of nature conservation designations and a golf course. The Abbey is a Grade II Listed Building and has a number of associated buildings that are listed as Grade II. The area is also the site of a registered battlefield from the Civil War.

To the north of the site, on the opposite riverbank, are two recreational areas, Beckett’s Park which is a formally laid out public park, and Midsummer Meadow, which is a more informal recreation ground.

The power station is next to the Avon Cosmetics building so is very hard to get a good look at durning the week, there is high security on what's left of the old building including CCTV and speaker systems, we took a look around the back of the site and stood where more of the building used to stand before it was nocked down and got some pretty decent photo's of what's behind there.

When going round the side of the building to try and enter what's left we were discovered by CCTV and asked to leave, which we did. Hopefully I will update this post with internal photo's at a later date as this building is rumored to have some famous graffiti inside.

For more than 10 years, graffiti artists have met at a warren of abandoned factory buildings behind the town's old power station.

The power station became known across Europe for its work, have hosted hundreds of paintings over the years, some of which took weeks to paint and cost the 'artists' hundreds of pounds. The site is now being bulldozed to make the way for the development of more than 1,000 houses, artists from across the country have begun to take notice of the work on show there.

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Grange Park Maisonette - Northampton - Section B (DEMOLISHED)

This building is a derelict maisonette on the border of the newly developed Grange Park housing estate in Northampton, This building can be seen when traveling down the A45 Southbound near the M1, the building is directly opposite the Hilton Hotel. When we first came across this building we thought it was one big house, once inside it felt like it was smaller, that is when we realized this building was a maisonette, sadly Section A (Front) is blocked off however section B can be entered from the rear. The building is in a VERY bad condition so caution had to be taken, some walls had collapsed and most of the roof has been taken away probably due to weathering. This house is heavily graffitied mainly by Northampton's local "NFA" boys, some of the art inside the house is extremely impressive, there is a stairwell with a length long piece of graffiti art stretching up the stairs that is a must see piece.

When upstairs most of the flooring has been broken and the only footing is the timber beams that are keeping the structure of the house together, the stairwell is safe to climb as is completely constructed out of concrete however the upper level does not offer much to see. There has been allot of tales about the history of this house from simply people living there and working up at the local service station to the house being a huge crack den, sadly I cannot confirm any of these tales as after researching as much as I could nothing came up.

This house is a hotspot for local photographers to do urban photography and modeling.

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Old Meals on Wheels Centre - Northampton - Site A (DEMOLISHED)

As many of you will already know Meals-On-Wheels is a service typically ran by the NHS to provide hot cooked meals to the elderly or disabled, they cook the meal and deliver it to there door. Around 2002-2003 the Meals-On-Wheels centre closed and relocated it's self as part of the re-development of the Northampton General Hospital, I could not get much information about the building and that's probably because there isn't much! The building is not incredibly old, possibly 70's/80's but no earlier. It seems that when the building closed they did not plan to take anything with them, many items were left, including industrial kitchen equipment and heavy duty office equipment. The doors are left wide open on Site A and there are signs of homeless people sleeping there, however there was no trace of drug use. Site B is boarded and bolted and there is no immediate access at this time. There is also heavy amounts of graffiti in all rooms of the building and some are very impressive, local vandals have literally taken this place apart but nothing has been taken.

We went to this site in a team of four,the building consisted of two kitchens and two industrial fridges, an office block, a cafe and a huge storage room there was also a small waiting area. The building has no signs of collapse and still holds a good structure. Meals-On-Wheels is located behind the Northampton NHS Hospital and next to the Harley Davidson Garage.

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Northampton Workhouse/Asylum (Far Left Building) - Photo Included

Northampton Union Workhouse was erected 1836 on Wellingborough Road, Northampton to accommodate 300 inmates, from designs by G. Gilbert Scott. It became known as St Edmunds Workhouse, and later St Edmunds Hospital.

The Hospital was closed in 1998 and services relocated. The building is still there to date but has been heavily vandalized by junkies and common vandals, Damage includes 100's of smashed windows, collapsed ceilings, doors ripped from hinges and on one particular site a whole floor has heavy fire damage. The site still contains small amounts of medical waste and very high amounts of used syringes that near-by junkies have left behind. If anyone is interested in visiting the site I strongly recommend visiting during the day and with a team. I will hold no liability for people being attacked or injured at this site.

In July 2009, Me and a good friend visited the far left building which consisted of three floors, a basement and a loft. The basement was not visited and nor was the loft due to safety reasons. This building included what we believe to be a visiting area, staff quarters, three medical wards, a waiting area and a storage room. Below are photo's of our visit.

I believe that on the ground floor was the staff quarters, store area and waiting rooms, the second and third floor contained several wards and storage area's - We did not use the lifts as the building does not have any power supply and it would have been very unsafe.

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