In the depths of Surrey stands West Park… But not for much longer. It’s formidable brick walls crumble under the weight of progress and this building having been built as an institution, commandeered to house foreign soldiers during The War, before finally being handed over the health service and providing another place for the nation to incarcerate the mad and unsightly specimens of society, or those that we simply wished to ignore, has been deemed not worth saving.

It was sad to see the first parts of the place reduced to large mounds of rubble and the ghosts of the building stood by and watched us and the workers in silence. The usual banging doors and creaking floorboards fell quiet and we walked for hours through the twisting maze undisturbed. Usually, where they might protest at our trespass, now knowing they would soon be haunting no-where, the ghosts stood aside and allowed us to pass unhindered, almost begging for us to preserve their little slice of limbo, hoping that we might just catch them in our photos, as well as the place in which they hid.

West Park lay open before us. Where doors had once been nailed shut, they hung loosely on their hinges and the few that were still solid had an open window near by. Climbing to the top of the water tower we could see where the work had begun and see the vast task that levelling the site would be. It was a fortress, even now, and so much still remained.

We wondered as if in a daze. The site was so familiar. The smells of the asylum gripped me and I walked around, damp, decay and even now something slightly clinical, filled my nostrils as i went looking at the place. The stories of these walls and rooms, how I wished the could speak and could part their paint cracked lips to whisper what had been.

I had come armed with film, its nostalgia and tactility suiting a place of such texture and yet i took few pictures. This trip had time for sitting and, perched on old chairs in a high room we swapped imperfect memories.

Putting my foot through the floor reminded me that this was still an organic place that moved in unseen ways and whilst it was an old friend of warm-toned summer evenings, it like any wounded beast that knows the spears are closing in, might take one last swipe and manage to take someone with it.

We left and had tea by the fire.

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