A little History
Benenden Hospital was founded in 1907 in Benenden, Kent and became the centre for hospital treatment for members of Trade Unions and Friendly Societies and subsequently large numbers of public sector employees who joined what is now benenden health.
The services provided at the hospital have moved with the times. From treatment for tuberculosis - which was its original role - to the management of chest diseases, to the current day where the hospital provides a wide range of consultation, diagnosis and treatment services for most medical and surgical specialties.
In recent years the hospital has increasingly had patients who are not members of benenden health. Local National Health Service agencies are increasing their use of the hospital's facilities, as are patients who use private medical insurance or who pay directly for their own hospital care.
The hospital provides a range of clinical services which are tailored to meet the needs of individual patients. The hospital has a Modern Matron – a senior and experienced professional – who has the authority to resolve problems.
The explore..
Visited with my better half, Hamtagger. We were attending the big Kent meet on the Saturday evening so decided to make a day of it. Deciding not to go on the tourist trail this week we decided to check out a place we had found before. It had been reported on around 2011-2012 and not knowing if the whole place was going to be live or not now considering the time between reports and being reliant on those reports for info, or if there was anything to see we paid the hospital a visit.
Greeted by a new building on the right our first thought was looks like we are to late but as we carried on we noticed the building that we were looking for. A large building, curved and much different from any other hospital I had seen. If you have read the history then you will know that it was an Isolation hospital, referred to as a Sanatorium in it's early days.
Anyway, quite impressed with the building we just had to find a way in. Knowing that this wasn't going to be easy and judging from the outside quite a bit of it was now live. The hospital was actually open so in we went. Had a little look around, we could see the bit we wanted but the door was locked so we found a staircase which took us upstairs, along a corridor with cubicles in then down another set of stairs in to the one piece of the building that wasn't live. Just one corridor. OK, so we had nothing else to look at so back out the same way we came in and after a little walk around the grounds we came across some old buildings, a swimming pool and a social club. Filled with medical equipment, this was obviously the pay off for a single corridor. Our day was worthwhile before heading to the meet! Thanks for the invite, we had a good time, mainly watching Raz, Jamie & Matt from the top of the fort haha. Nice to put some faces to names though at last
Anyway, pics
This was the 1 single corridor
So, from this building all I had was 3 pictures. Exterior pic was all that was left to take ..
Then we came across some more... this is what made the effort worthwhile..
HT testing out the Octopus machine.....
Don't see many of these around nowadays...
Just testing HT's blood pressure...
Benenden Hospital was founded in 1907 in Benenden, Kent and became the centre for hospital treatment for members of Trade Unions and Friendly Societies and subsequently large numbers of public sector employees who joined what is now benenden health.
The services provided at the hospital have moved with the times. From treatment for tuberculosis - which was its original role - to the management of chest diseases, to the current day where the hospital provides a wide range of consultation, diagnosis and treatment services for most medical and surgical specialties.
In recent years the hospital has increasingly had patients who are not members of benenden health. Local National Health Service agencies are increasing their use of the hospital's facilities, as are patients who use private medical insurance or who pay directly for their own hospital care.
The hospital provides a range of clinical services which are tailored to meet the needs of individual patients. The hospital has a Modern Matron – a senior and experienced professional – who has the authority to resolve problems.
The explore..
Visited with my better half, Hamtagger. We were attending the big Kent meet on the Saturday evening so decided to make a day of it. Deciding not to go on the tourist trail this week we decided to check out a place we had found before. It had been reported on around 2011-2012 and not knowing if the whole place was going to be live or not now considering the time between reports and being reliant on those reports for info, or if there was anything to see we paid the hospital a visit.
Greeted by a new building on the right our first thought was looks like we are to late but as we carried on we noticed the building that we were looking for. A large building, curved and much different from any other hospital I had seen. If you have read the history then you will know that it was an Isolation hospital, referred to as a Sanatorium in it's early days.
Anyway, quite impressed with the building we just had to find a way in. Knowing that this wasn't going to be easy and judging from the outside quite a bit of it was now live. The hospital was actually open so in we went. Had a little look around, we could see the bit we wanted but the door was locked so we found a staircase which took us upstairs, along a corridor with cubicles in then down another set of stairs in to the one piece of the building that wasn't live. Just one corridor. OK, so we had nothing else to look at so back out the same way we came in and after a little walk around the grounds we came across some old buildings, a swimming pool and a social club. Filled with medical equipment, this was obviously the pay off for a single corridor. Our day was worthwhile before heading to the meet! Thanks for the invite, we had a good time, mainly watching Raz, Jamie & Matt from the top of the fort haha. Nice to put some faces to names though at last
Anyway, pics
This was the 1 single corridor
So, from this building all I had was 3 pictures. Exterior pic was all that was left to take ..
Then we came across some more... this is what made the effort worthwhile..
HT testing out the Octopus machine.....
Don't see many of these around nowadays...
Just testing HT's blood pressure...
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