page_title: Whittingham Hospital
section_title: Decline and closure
hierarchical_section_title: Whittingham Hospital / History / Decline and closure
caption_attribution_description: English: Powerhouse Whittingham Hospital Four Belliss and Morcom steam engines in one room. A site that is probably gone forever. It is believed these were scrapped about 1998 and nearly all the steam power houses have slunk away in to the night.
context_page_description: Whittingham Hospital was a psychiatric hospital in the parish of Whittingham, near Preston, Lancashire, England. The hospital opened in 1873 as the Fourth Lancashire County Asylum and grew to be the largest mental hospital in Britain, and pioneered the use of electroencephalograms. It closed in 1995.
context_section_description: During the 1970s and 1980s, new drugs and therapies were introduced to treat people suffering from mental illnesses. Long-stay patients were returned to the community or dispersed to smaller units around Preston. The hospital closed in 1995 and the site subsequently became known as "Guild Park". In 1999, Guild Lodge was opened on the edge of Guild Park, providing secure mental healthcare services to a small number of patients, followed the next year by purpose-built rehabilitation cottages close by.
  It is planned to build 650 new homes on the site and to convert some of the hospital buildings for use as apartments. St John's and St Margaret's divisions have been demolished. Due to uncertainty over the construction of the Broughton bypass and the economic downturn there was little further progress, and the remaining buildings were left derelict, a popular destination for urban exploration. In 2014, planning permission was renewed and extended, and demolition of almost all of the remaining buildings resumed. The grade II listed St John's Church and five blocks, including St Luke's main entrance block, had originally been scheduled to be retained, along with some sporting and recreational facilities.
caption: One of four Belliss and Morcom engines used to generate the hospital's electricity supply, pictured in 1986
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