Eglington Asylum, Cork (May 08)

KevH wrote: »

Katie,

Going by the other threads......a night up there sounds a bit too scarey.....there are meant to be junkies and undesirables hanging about up there at night!!!

If however anyone is interested in going up there during the day for a wander around inside....take some photos etc, please drop me a note...I'm hoping to go up there in the next couple of weeks

Kev

smithalan2 wrote: »

The red bricked building and another grey building somewhere on the grounds both have ways to get in. I only had a small look inside a grey building since its hard enough to get into but its still pretty intact inside apart from everything in there thrown about the place , intrestingly enough we found a phone on a desk inside there that still had a dialtone :eek:.

The red building is creepy and depressing and very dangerous to get into due to holes on the roof you walk over to get in and broken glass everywhere. Everything in there is thrown around the place as well , The floor of one room in there is also tiled with used syringes... , Also at the very top floor ( It's like a kids ward or something due to the painting on the walls ) There was a sandpit , jigsaws , diary entries , and a water feature full of water , weather those things were planted there or are there from the days it was open i'm not sure.

The 2nd time i went there , after coming out we had a welcoming party of 4 Gardaí , They were'nt very upset at us being there however they did search us for drugs etc... but just told us to leave when they found we had nothing on us and had just came up there to explore. Besides from the Gardaí on our second visit there was no sign of any security at all and also no sign of other people.

Another very intresting place , which is possibly scarier than St. Annes is Fort Camdon , in Crosshaven Co.Cork , Its an abandoned army base.

kitty29 wrote: »

Hiya :-)

Thought i'd leave a quick msg to this. Firstly as you say when it closed in 1988 i think you may be reffering to the grey part of the building, that right? Some sections of the red brick building (St Kevins) was opened up until (now i'm not 100% which year it closed) at least 1998 so i'm guessing that part closed around 2000. From what i've heard conditions in the grey building (called St ita's 1 and 2 i think amongst other names) were far more appalling than the red brick right up until its closure. Nonetheless, conditions in St Kevins were pretty appalling too particularly given that it was open until around 2000-thats not a long time ago. This was a place where upto 10 women (i only know about the womens ward) lived and slept in a pretty small ward. one room was where one would get locked into for any number of reasons- usually for being agressive or a bit 'mad'- not always necessarily against themselves or others. This was a pretty grim room with only a bed (i suppose its better than just a matress!) and the door had a big window made of perspex (or something like that) so you could see out and see in. The toilets often had no toilet paper, there was no locks on the toilet doors for obvious reasons- and one experience i had while going to the toilet, was when a woman came in and tried to choke herself with a pair of tights (dont think its possible but she was so full of anxiety), people were trying to do stuff to themselves all the time- a lot of it i feel was because of the sheer boredom and frustration that place did to a person. The nurses station which was completely covered is where a lot of the nurses stayed inside all day. When someone wanted a cigerette they opened a latch and lit a lighter. Not all nurses were like this (there were extremely caring ones too) but the majority were-I honestly dont think they saw the patients as 'humans', all their dignity, respect, rights were taken away once they entered that place. There were many instances of cockroaches on the floor. Once or twice the bed room had to be fumagated due to beg bugs. From my own experience of being in there for a year and half i always found the experience of being in there harder to overcome than my depression etc. This may sound bad but i also felt i was the sanest person in there-my only 'crime' (i like to call it copping mechanism) was to hurt myself-it could be compared to an addiction. I will never forget the people i met in there who once you looked past how they were acting were amazing people. Some had been put into our ladys many yrs before that and in effect probabbly were institutionalized. they never recieved the right support (note i use support rather than help), they were treated so horribly, drugged upto their eyeballs continiously so that are controlled, not dealing with whats underneath all this anger,pain, hurt. I was on about 15+ tablets at one stage-how was that supposed to help. What really makes me mad is the fact that i was only just turned 17 when i went in there. I got a lot worse before i got better and it certainly was not down to my twice a week 10 minute abrupt insensitive visit from my consultant psychiatrist- it mostly certainly was a combination of support from one or two amazing compassionate nurses,psychologist who taught me the skills to learn how to talk about things and how to cry, the never ending incredible support of my family and of course my own determination and hard work. i took myself off my medication a month or two after i got out and have never needed/taken it again and thats a bit over 10 years ago. anways i think i ended up giving a bit of a rant there