High Royds daybreak

Image: © philld Taken: 27 Dec 2007

The ghosts of High Royds Christmas past! A bleak mid winter's day dawns again over High Royds. This shot was taken 2 days after Christmas 2007. This panorama shot was taken from the clock tower of the main administration building. Before reaching the clock tower the maze of silent empty corridors lay ahead, still in darkness filled with a most eerie empty atmosphere. The day was cold, overcast and the wind was howling with driving rain. Battered and rocked by the wind I attempted to get some steady hand held shots of the panorama huddled behind the low parapet wall. This was a bleak place. This is High Royds, A self contained town for the insane. High Royds was one of the last remaining psychiatric hospitals of its kind still functioning when it closed in February 2003. Opening on 8 October 1888 it was then known as West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum. It was the third establishment of its kind in the former West Riding of Yorkshire, The hospital site included at one stage a library, surgery, dispensary, ballroom, butchers, dairies, bakers and even its own railway. By the 1930’s a sweetshop, cobbler, upholsterer and a tailor were all added turning the hospital into a small self-contained village.

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