Remembering..... Prudhoe Hospital (a journey through the centre of the site).

[@danjames4086]

Man, this brings back memories. I was a student there in the 1990s. I'm sure there are lots of horror stories from places like this, but it also felt like a very safe place for the many vulnerable residents. It makes me sad to see it abandoned because it means so much to me. I was living in Newcastle at the time, but then the chance of a room in the student accommodation of Prudhoe came up. Had I not taken it, I wouldn't have got to know the girl who I eventually married and had kids with.

[@theunknowngardener4514]

Check out the Prudhoe Hospital Memories facebook page - thanks for your comments.

[@danjames4086]

No, the thanks go to you for making this video. I'm don't use Facebook...but my wife does, she's going to have a look.

[@theunknowngardener4514]

@@danjames4086 lots of photos and videos on the FB page including "Memoirs" from people who worked there. Feel free to give us your memories.

[@SloopyDog]

Most of my family worked at Prudhoe Hospital. Both my sisters, my mother myself and my daughter. I loved Prudhoe Hospital it was sad to see it closed.

[@theunknowngardener4514]

Yes Prudhoe Hospital was a huge employer in the local area. If you didn't work there yourself, the chances are you knew someone who did. It was a very strange feeling walking around, photographing the site between 2007 and 2015. Among the overgrown grounds and decaying, boarded up buildings, came a huge sense of sadness. The grounds would once have been busy with residents going about their business. It's amazing how eerie it was on the other side of Prudhoe Hall towards Westwell.

[@SloopyDog]

@@theunknowngardener4514 It was a spooky place I was a labourer driver there in the 60s, then an auxiliary nurse in the 70s. One of my jobs as a labourer driver was to go into the underground ducts to spray the cock roaches and clean up after the post-mortems at the mortuary. Not a nice job. I could tell you a lot of strange tales about Prudhoe Hospital. I loved the place and I loved working with the patients.

[@theunknowngardener4514]

@@SloopyDog by all means contact me via the blue message button on the Prudhoe Hospital Memories Facebook page. Always very happy to hear the good, the bad and the ugly (and the strange for that matter). The heating ducts have been a source of a lot of debate on the page over the years where the elusive "prowler," was concerned. I was chatting to a security guard one evening and he told me about catching the odd Urban Explorer down in the ducts. On the subject of the mortuary, I mention my grandad observing the odd post mortem in the late 50s and 60s in the video "From Norham to Westwell," again on the PHM Facebook page.

[@SloopyDog]

@@theunknowngardener4514 Patients went missing from time to time some were found living in the ducts. It was warm there were lights and some of the ducts came out in the hospital kitchens, so no shortage of food. A million cockroaches can't be wrong. There was an old mortuary attached to the Midways which was very spooky, they stopped using it as it flooded. There was a cemetery at Prudhoe hospital but I am not sure where it was. As a labourer driver, I got to most places in the hospital, including the inside of the Lancashire boilers to de-scale them. I was given a lot of strange jobs to do, my wages when I started at the hospital were £ 6.50 per week, I was only 19 then and green as grass so I would do anything. Happy days.

[@danjames4086]

That's weird. Darlington Hospital supposedly had a prowler in the 1970s too...and he used the air ducts. I wonder 8mif this is a common urban myth about hospitals?

[@johnw13473]

Remember it well my old boss used to keep cows on the land there