Hello everyone.
A glance at history will tell you that Winston Churchill, whose face currently sits on the British £5 note, is awesome because he saved the world from Hitler.
So of course the good people of Shrewsbury decided to name a mental health clinic after him.
It just puts me in an awkward position since, when I heard that the new £5 note is waterproof and unrippable, I announced the genius scheme to use it as toilet paper. Wipe your arse with it, wash the money clean when you're done, and use again, and again. You'll save so much money on toilet paper, at the cost of £5.
... it just means wiping your bottom with Winston Churchills face...
This beautiful abandoned office block sits at the back of the Radbrook complex, making it the third and final conquest of those buildings, the first being the huge labyrinthian Radbrook College, and the second being Bourne House which had been pillaged by a weirdo who likes to write "Fear" everywhere, like it was some terrible, terrible scare attraction and I was being told which emotion I was meant to be displaying, like a forced laugh track on a terrible sit com.
What I did find in Bourne House was forms for victims of domestic violence, complete with the names, addresses and nature of the abuse filled out and casually left lying around for trespassers to see, killing all of my faith in services like this, who should be abiding by confidentiality laws and disposing of sensitive materials appropriately.
So I was curious about what sensitive information would be left behind in Winston Churchill House. Luckily, since Radbrook College and Bourne House have been trespassed on about as subtlety as the holocaust, security has increased a lot over the last year or so. Of course, I'm pretty awesome, so getting in and out undetected was easy.
It took a few months of scouting, waiting for someone to break a window, and getting in before anyone noticed. Whoever broke the window was a bit of a doofus. And I don't mean a nice, cute clumsy kind of doofus. I'm talking so inbred that their family tree is a circle kind of doofus. The building itself is actually C-shaped, with a garden in the middle bit, which was walled off by security to stop people hiding in it. The wall itself is easy to climb, awarding the casual trespasser with a walled off overgrown garden, which nobody can see into. Logic would suggest anyone wanting to break in could break one of those windows, and it would go unnoticed by security for months. But no, the person who broke into this building didn't think of that. They smashed the most blindingly obvious easy-to-see window on the entire building, giving a sense of urgency to my own little adventure.
Thanks a bunch, you berk.
So here's a few shots of the garden.
Time to slip inside.
I stupidly left my camera on manual focus for the start of this adventure, but the picture quality does increase once I notice. Thanks for understanding my rookie mistake.
Apparently being closed for the foreseeable future hasn't stopped the mailman. But this pile of envelopes does give the casual adventurer an insight into some of the purpose of Winston Churchill House.
Here's a letter for the Eating Disorders department.
But this letter is for Nigel Baker and the Archaeological service. It's a bit of an odd service to find operating out of a mental health clinic, but the building is certainly big enough to have multiple uses, having three stairways and numerous entrances.
Just past the main entrance is this odd wall art.
Right next to the entrance is this walk-in cupboard, containing the electrical meters and all that.
Hey look, all these wires and bits, this must be the remains of some kind of electric torture device.
I'm kidding. It's a phone exchange.
Just a cheeky nod to someone.
Some kind of reception area.
I think CMHT means Community Mental Health Team.
Winston Churchill House was, until a few years ago, just one of a few mental health clinics that closed when the entire Mental Health Team was merged out in Sundorne Health Village.
Being on the same ground as Radbrook College, along with Bourne House, the buildings were collectively known as Radbrook Village, which is why in the entrance there's also this lovely mural welcoming me to Radbrook.
I think it was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer where Angelus killed Jenny Calendar in the school, she enquired about how he, a vampire, was able to access the building without an invite, seeing as Vampires are mystically barred from entering anywhere unless they are invited. Angelus pointed out that above the school, in Latin, were the words "Enter all who seek knowledge" which served as an invitation, allowing him to kill Jenny Calendar and prevent her from restoring his soul.
I mean, it's a stretch but can I not take this big hallway sign as an invitation to be here too? It says Welcome to Radbrook in English, Welsh, Italian and French, okay? They really want people to be here. Surely this gets me off the hook for trespassing, right? If it would work for vampires, it can work for me, right?
But the thing is, Angelus dumps Jennys body in the home of Rupert Giles, but he never had an invite there, to my knowledge. I'm a little disappointed that Jos Whedon missed that plot hole in spite of the episode having such emphasis on the vampire-invitation rule.
But Buffy the Vampire Slayer was still more progressive that what current social justice warriors are doing in other media like, say, Marvel Comics. Buffy gave us strong female protagonists without it being detrimental to the male supporting cast. In Buffy the male characters would sometimes show up and save the day, and sometimes the females would rescue the male damsel in distress, but nobody made that much of a deal out of it. Sometimes the men would comment on their bruised male ego, but it was often humourous, and they were still strong characters in their own right. That was diversity done properly.
But I digress, mainly because of my painful break up with Marvel Comics. Back to the adventure!
Here's a board that presumably once held a signing-in book.
I'm sure this sign is directing people to the doorway to the part of Winston Churchill House that provides some kind of service for learning disabilities. But to take the sign literally, as people with learning disabilities are prone to doing, one will find adults with learning disabilities huddled together in the corner of the courtyard.
I'm being pedantic, but the wording of this sign tickled me.
But it is worth noting that people with learning disabilities had some kind of service here, although I'm not sure what.
Here there's an intercom for the Early Intervention Team, and the Community Mental Health Team.
The hallways are fairly plain. The building is tied in to the history of Radbrook College, which was initially constructed in 1898 as Shrewsbury Technical School for Girls, later Shrewsbury College of Domestic Sciences. It taught subjects that are stereotypically female, like cooking and sewing, preparing Shropshires young ladies for a future of being a housewife. There was a dairy farm on campus, which has since been demolished. Bourne House and Winston Churchill House were initially constructed to be student accomodation. They became office blocks in the 1980s when the horticultural aspect of the college moved to Walford College. In spite of no longer being part of the college, it was all still collectively known as the Radbrook complex.
So these hallways have had generations of female student residents, years of patients suffering with their mental health, and people with learning disabilities when they're not being told to go stand in a corner in the courtyard. Thats quite a variety of visitors.
And then of course, theres me, and the original trespasser who smashed the window in the first place. I was expecting to see a lame graffiti tag like "Fear" or some other emotive instruction like "Cuddle someone." But for the most part, it was eerily clean, apart from the mess.
Here's the reception area.
This would have once been full of keys.
Look, instructions for putting up shelves.
Here are some interesting notices, particularly the door lock. Entering C before the door code basically cancels what has already been inputted. If someone comes along and casually presses the number 1, and you come along and enter the door code, it won't open because of the input of the original number 1. Pressing the C (for cancel) button removes any prior input, allowing the correct door code to be entered. It's like hitting backspace on a computer if you type the wrong key into your password, or the clear button on an ATM machine if you type your pin number wrong. I don't understand what is meant by the door code being damaged unless the letter C is pressed. That's pretty odd phrasing.
In one end of the C-shaped loop of the building is this kitchen area. The kitchen has seen better days.
There's an awful lot of destruction here for a building with no graffiti. Usually those two walk hand in hand.
I love that the tea and coffee supplies are exclusive to the Early Intervention Team, but people are allowed to use them if they contribute to them. I have absolutely no training in early intervention teamliness so I guess if I worked here I'd be left drinking tap water.
These kind of notes are found in workplaces all over the world, and at the time of writing they might mean something. But now, viewed here amongst the temporaryness of all things, doesn't it really seem petty?
This cupboard is labeled "Mugs" but in reality it's been packed full of old paperwork.
And now for the part of an adventure that I always dread- the toilets.
These are the gents. They're still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.
Even if the sink has been destroyed.
In the hallway was this paperwork, which appears to be a performance review for a staff member called Yvonne. It says that her performance is second to none. In fact it makes her out to be rather a saint.
Onto the ladies toilets!
Yep... still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.
The last time I went out drinking and actually enjoyed myself, I went to the toilets at a bar, and as I was coming out a woman approached me and said "Excuse me, where are the ladies?"
I pointed out to the crowded bar area and said "If you go out there, there's loads of them."
She didn't appreciate my sense of humour.
The tampon dispenser was broken open and its contents removed. Could this be the work of the original trespasser?
This yellow room had a pleasant vibe, and led to this large hallway.
With windows on either side and signs pointing to a waiting room, and a door opening out into the courtyard, I couldn't help but wonder if maybe this was another entrance to a different service in the same building.
This paperwork dated 2011 talks about how to take blood samples.This is apparently to do with a form of medication given to people with schizophrenia. Its such a powerful drug that it requires periodic blood tests to make sure it's not doing any harmful damage to the patient.
There's a friendly banner along the top of the door, reading Radbrook, adding to the overall pleasant vibe this room has.
There's a cupboard full of old paperwork, with a broken lock.
The hallway proceeds to the waiting room, while also identifying the rooms I had come from as support for eating disorders, CMHT and also Memory Clinic.
There's no way I'm going any further without googling Memory Clinic.
Memory Clinics provide memory tests for people struggling with memory loss, and also provide support for dementia.
Meanwhile all the signs point out the layout of the place.
While directions are given to the waiting room, no room is actually labeled the waiting room. But this is one suspect, seeing as its the first room one comes to after passing the waiting area sign.
All these signs about the waiting room. But nowhere is actually labeled the goddamn waiting room!!!
Finally, we have a sign from the person who broke in. You know, who needs sex education when you can just become an urban explorer? Everything I know about reproductive anatomy comes from urban explorers. No wonder I'm so bad in bed.
Here we appear to have a Unisex toilet, which seems to have had more than its fair sense of graffiti, carried out by the same person who wrote See You Next Tuesday on the window.
"Die."
"I'll kill you."
That's gramatically correct, too. What a pleasant surprise.
"Pussy." It's written next to another Tampon dispenser thats been broken into and looted.
Wait a sec... Cunt? Pussy? Two slang words for the vagina, located in and around a unisex toilet, with a looted Tampon dispenser and aggressive death threats?
This guy has entered a unisex toilet and found out for the first time what makes women different from men. hasn't he? He's not insulting anyone with "Cunt" or "Pussy," just telling us what he's seen, and it's blowing his mind!
Calm down, dude, it's just a vagina.
I progressed further, but most of the offices were pretty samey.
Why are all these doors off their hinges and propped up against walls?
Aaaahhh!!! What the Hell? Calm down dude, it's just a vagina!!!
Well, I can only assume the graffiti guy is dead now, unable to cope with his discovery. Are you happy? You see the dark path that having unisex toilets leads down??? Do you see the horrors of shared waste depositories????
During the brief period in which I saw the various slang terms for the female between-the-leg-space, and aggressive statements, I really felt like the graffiti guy was there with me, a companion of sorts throughout this office block. He will be missed.
This office had a whiteboard, containing a timetable. The words on it, reading "It's been a blast" were no doubt written by staff on the last day of this place being used.
On the wall are some instructions on how to measure someones height. I'm not sure why this would be required in this sort of place. I think measuring height and comparing that to ones weight is part of the process of figuring out if someone is overweight or not.
There's another kitchen, this one is considerably less trashed and not containing any selfish notes from the Early Intervention Team concerning coffee products.
Here's a note in an office claiming that Viv and Susan will be responsible for faxing and scanning from now on. Often the things that get left behind sure do baffle me. I mean, someone strips the office, and of all the things to leave behind, why this? Surely it would have been binned.
I'm now approaching the far end of the C-shaped building. There's a staircase here, and indeed it is the third one in the building. I have, however, not gone upstairs yet. There is still more to see on the ground floor.
Beyond the stairs is an exit door. I'll come back to this! There's one final office.
Aaaaand it's more or less what you'd expect by now!
The exit doors brought me out to the courtyard in the middle of the C-shaped building, and it appears to be where the staff would enter, to save them coming through the main entrance.
But there is a hallway attached to this that leads to a storage area, and that had some confusing contents.
There's some strange graffiti in here that I can only assume was here before the place closed down.
Bizarrely in contrast to the rest of the building, this area hasn't been cleared out.
There's some graffiti behind the shelves.
And there's a sign for the Shropshire Archaeological Group, but what purpose did they even have in a mental health clinic?
Most bizarrely there are two bikes that don't look abandoned. In fact they rather stick out. It made me wonder if maybe I wasn't the only trespasser in Radbrook Village that day. I was fairly certain that I was the only person in Winston Churchill House, but the owners of these bikes could easily have stashed their bikes here, away from the security gaze, to go and explore the other buildings.
Having explored all of the ground floor, it was time to venture upstairs.
Here's another height chart.
Hey cool, our friend is back! I guess he was just being melodramatic, or perhaps was playing hang man. Either way, he's here and he's still discussing female anatomy.
Calm down, dude. It's just a vagina.
My friendly graffiti buddy wants to be left alone. I guess he has a lot to think about.
This office is identical in shape to the one beneath it, except it has a whiteboard at the far end.
I guess this is some sort of workplace rota.
Moving onto the other offices...
Most of these are rather samey but I did find this sanitary towel that has been removed from its packaging. I assume that this was found and opened by the graffiti guy in an attempt to understand vaginas. I'm personally all in favour of him learning. Perhaps as I continue my adventure, his graffiti will evolve into full essays about the female reproductive system.
This graffiti is done by someone else, perhaps an even earlier trespasser or a pissed off former employee. It seems a lot more intriguing.
There's a central kitchen area up here, still containing paper towels.
I do not know why there is a shower facility. Perhaps staff remained on site sometimes.
I see now why my mysterious graffiti friend fled upstairs. Things make sense to him up here.
Now this is an odd discovery. It appears to be an exam paper from 1987. But that would mean that this sheet of paper predates the buildings use as a mental health clinic and dates back to the buildings time as student accomodation. How has it survived this long?
This is a worrying discovery, and I really dreaded finding anything like this after Bourne House, with its domestic violence support application forms giving me far too much information that I should not have. This time, what I've found is a doctors admission form of a patient to Shelton Hospital. Shelton Hospital is a psychiatric hospital. These are the personal details of someone who has just been sectioned.
I shouldn't have access to this. It should have all been locked away or destroyed, as required by confidentiality laws, not idly left on the floor of an abandoned office block for people who think its cool to write "cunt" on a wall to stumble across. This, plus my discovery in Bourne House, has made me pretty wary of the entire service being given here.
I also found this schizophrenia leaflet.
And also these sheets about Makaton, which would have been used to interact with the people with learning disabilities.
There's also some computer equipment that has been left behind.
There's a sheet here about budget management.
I finally have a name for that graffiti guy. Hello, MC Clive. I hope if you're reading this that you've since done research and that the world makes more sense to you now.
The pins on this noticeboard are laid out like a smiley face.
In a weak attempt at protesting against the new information, MC Clive has decided, perhaps inevitably given his IQ, to draw willies now.
We finally get some diversity of office decor, with this pink room.
There's a chart on the wall which talks about assessing someones mental capacity. I can only assume from this that this area dealt with people with learning disabilities.
There's another toilet up here.
It's still in better condition than some of the toilets in some pubs and clubs.
Theres a website scrawled on this whiteboard, no doubt left over by staff.
This room has a left over photograph.
Are these two people staff? Patients? Is it Viv and Susan??? Could it be the legendary Yvonne? If you recognise yourself then let me know.
There's a random segment of carpet cut out, revealing the original flooring beneath. Is this the flooring that this place had when it was a residential property?
There is also this window with several dead wasps. It's times like these that I wish I had a macro lens.
As you can see, MC Clive came through here and left us a message to tell us that he is mad. But mad in what sense? Is he angry? Has he been driven to madness by his discoveries?
I'm on the edge of my seat. What will he do next?
Well in this next room I discovered that MC Clive may in fact have squatted here, judging by the presence of a kettle, and that while doing so he hoarded together all of the tampons and sanitary towels that he could find, in an attempt to understand womankind. This explains why all the dispensing machines in the toilets were looted!
Shit guys, I know who MC Clive is! He's that guy who became famous for saying that women should just control their bladders! I'm so excited. I've always wanted to meet a celebrity.
Here we can see MC Clive has discovered that wetting a sanitary towel allows it to adhere to the wall. I have to be honest, I didn't know that. Sure, there's no real need for me to know that, but I cant help but feel outsmarted by MC Clive.
Theres an electrical cupboard here too.
Moving on to the other rooms...
The word "Die" is written on the window.
Here's a fire exit leading to some external stairs.
See, this noticeboard has been stripped of everything except these little bits, and I dont understand why. Surely if one was removing things from this board, and placing them into a bin, all of it would go.
Here I've actually found the mission statement of the organisation. It specifies respecting the dignity of the patients, one of which was sectioned, and I happen to have seen their name and home address written on a form left in this building. How dignifying.
This room was surprising, being painted bright red, being considered an angry colour. It just seemed out of place in a mental health clinic.
I assume another signing in book would have rested on this wooden panel.
We have some interesting artwork here, some of which has been removed.
And some generic impersonal art that places like this always seem to have, that nobody ever looks at.At my place of work I regularly turn them upside-down to see if anyone notices. They usually last that way until new staff get recruited. New staff are always more observant.
There's a final scribble at the end of the hallway from MC Clive, who has perhaps come to peace with the fact that not everyone has a willy.
And here we have one of the tiles of artwork that were missing from that wall.
The final room is this bright red kitchen.
I didn't look in the fridge. One thing I've learned from this sport- Never look in the fridge.
It turns out that they may have sold postcards here.
And this photo isnt the best, but check out that goop on the draining board.
That's pretty much all I have on Winston Churchill House, a mental health clinic named after a prime minister... or nodding bulldog depending on how much TV you watch. I hope this blog can help raise awareness within the organisation that confidential information needs to be disposed of properly. Anybody working in the current venue at Sundorne needs to know, this has happened in two of their former buildings now, and its inexcusable when it happens once. Twice is ridiculous.
So please share this blog on any social media platform you fancy, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Any money that you can donate to the blog, hit that donate button at the top there. The money literally just goes on more adventures, increasing the life of this blog. But far more important is that you all go out there and make someone smile. There's a lot of misery in the world, and we each have the power to turn someones day around. The moment you see another human being, you have power over how good their day is. Even a friendly smile as they pass you on the street could lift someones spirits if they're feeling glum. If you frown at the world, the world will frown back. If you smile at the world, the world will probably smile back.
It's not smiling back?
Don't worry about it.
Equally as important to making each other smile is doing what you love. One of the more baffling aspects of human nature is that miserable people laugh at happy people for doing what they love. Maybe pooping on someone happy makes them feel powerful. But miserable people should be learning from happy people, because they're clearly doing something right. They're doing what they love. Nobody will care 200 years from now that I climbed right to the top of St Chads church, but in sixty years I'll be looking back on that moment from my armchair, telling myself that my life was awesome. Real success is dying happy.
Thanks for reading! Stay awesome!
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