OUIL405 Studio Brief 2 - Tell an Untold Story pt 1 The Visual Journalist

High Royds

Second day out.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                For my second trip out i went down to High Royds Village which it is now known. This place was only turned into a village in the last 10 years before this it was a mental health hospital which had a few different names but probably the most known one is West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum which was closed on 25 February 2003. Before this tho it was a hospital which opened in 1888 and was to house the mentally ill which it did for many years. over this time period many storeys have come out from the hospital be it from patients or staff, and some of the stories you hear are truly mind blowing and disturbing.  

I have grown up not too far from where High Royds is situated and have explored its ground way before it shut up as a hospital and well after its closure. Most of this time spent in the grounds would probably be classed as some kind of criminal act but we were just having fun and trying to find out if the rumours and stories we and heard could possibly of been true.  We definitely found some very disturbing and messed up stuff on these adventures including padded holding cells, burnt out grand ball rooms, a mortuary with dissecting table, even having a patients of the hospital appar out of the bushes in the middle of the night with a football wanting to know if we wanted  a game with him (very scary) but he was harmless.
But this is nothing compared to the horror stories we had been told as children about the place.        

This is the main building you come to as you make your way up the long drive way. Also on this page are some of the facts i have found out about the hospital and  drawing of the brain as this is what the hospital liked to mend. 

 (Indian Ink and pencil)

This sheet has a drawing of a broken bit of tile i found at the site which looked like it was part of a much larger decorative piece and was blue. The top right is a drawing of the building in which the monarchy room and table was situated, and the bottom left is the silhouette of the roof tops in the evening sky. 

 (Indian Ink, Watercolour paint)

Top left is one of the old building which has not been demolished just renovated in to new apartments and still hold its grandness which it was build with back in 1888. 

This was a quick sketch i did from my van sat on the front seats to see if i could capture how grand the clock tower look through the trees that are planted to the right hand side of the building, but even in my van it was so very cold i found it hard to draw in them freezing conditions.


Due to major budget cuts in the economy by them dam torys this story has had to be stopped due to severe lack of funds in the research department, but don't fear we are heading in a new direction still using the research we already have but putting it to a different use. MAPS coming soon.