cane hill | walking the perimeter
29|04|02

Here’s a great view of the ‘chair room’, although all the chairs have gone.

I like this view. The wooden conservatory looks a little dilapidated (but aren’t they all?) No, I like the way the modern, perfect tiled roof[1] and the no-nonsense upper windows (sensibly closed and perfect) contrast with the opened ground floor windows.

Another example of Cane Hill’s window merchant, some weird person who gets off on opening windows and freaking the rest of us out.

[1] All the roofs at Cane Hill are well finished. No lose tiles. No holes. newly fixed and well kept. The rest is going to rack and ruin, but the roofs are still as good as the day they were laid. More evidence that the place is barmy. But...

"Although the roofs appear OK from outside, most of the buildings are severely water damaged inside, especially the corridors. The two blocks round the back with the lifts are of different construction (concrete floors and ceilings), and have survived. I don't think there will be another building left with more than one floor that you can walk on."

This is the end of the Olave/Queens ward. Directly behind it is the Pucin/Paxton wards but without access to No. 2 Garden, there's no way to photograph it.

See also: October 2002.


2009: The solarium of Male Ward "A" cut across the front of the building, encasing the original windows; this is in contrast to the extension of Female Ward "A" which was tacked onto the side of the ward. I assume either ground levels or available space dictated the differences between them.

The accumulation of chairs isn’t a mystery either. As the hospital was cleared, the northerly wards were completely emptied, with furniture and equipment moved to the front wards. All the chairs were simply piled into the solarium.


Looking north-west towards Olave/Queens and its Solarium extension. © Simon Cornwell 2002