Further up from the water tower is (or was ) a derelict farm, is this still there.The author of "Black Beauty" used to live there.
Graylingwell Farm is still there. As far as I know it's grade II listed. It is to be retained along with the main hall, water tower, admin, chapel and some ward blocks. As an aside note, thought some of you might be interested in this estate plan from c. 1910 (please do not copy without permission):
Great photos by the way. I once spent the best part of a month cataloguing the records of patients from the 1900s, some complete with photographs. Some of the patients were as young as 12 or 13 and many didn't live long: pretty harrowing stuff. Contrary to popular belief however, most patients were not incarcerated for life and many stayed for less than a year until they were deemed to have recovered.
I was up here over Easter but walked straight into two security round the first corner just as I'd managed to dodge the outside PIRs. They then tried to scare me with some schlock about DNA evidence and calling the Police before attempting to pin the blame for a broken fence on me. Great fun.
Development is continuing apace of course: the
developer's website is predictably sanitised and devoid of history. As Ian Sinclair once wrote,
The thing that disturbed me [about asylum conversions] was the absence of memory - all traces of what had been there before had been cannily erased, including the name.
Great job of destigmatising mental illness, guys...