Here are the rest of the un published images from High Royds Lunatic asylum, taken over 2 visits, in those visits I have gained unique access to the place through trespass, something we all do as urban explorers, but to feed ourself the delusion we are a sum more than ourselves is feeding paranoia about our actions, they’re bricking up and locking down at High Royds.
This is not due to visits of urban explorers, it has more to do with the place being trashed, in part due to it being left for over 2 years with little or no security, this has happened time and again to places of historical and social interest.
The work of has exposed the crimes of what I would call a concentration camp for the working class, you only need to read the story of Derek Hutchinson and others to realise the ugly truth of this place.
I was asked not to publish these images, due to the fact it gave the game away had been in, however people had visited before and during my 2 visits there has been many published images, it becomes crass to say we are informing the current owners of our trespass if we publish the images. I have no shame in my actions and using my work to expose the crimes that have been done at High Royds, this why I do urban exploration.
I shall be doing a last visit as there are unreached parts of this place I have not seen and would like to see, during each visit demographics have changed, and to be frank if there was a real concern over urban explorers been in and out, they would have locked it down a long while ago. The simple truth is the more it is left open to more it becomes a ruin and possible reason for them to demolish this place.
No, I feel our actions have made the current owners act, to stop this becoming a reality, the current game of bricking up and locking down is not to stop us lot, but to stop vandals and thieves nicking lead. I know from my past exploration of the former Middlewood Asylum, if we had documented the place and done what SilverStealth has done, we might have saved more than just the trees.
I would like for us all to go and do a Mass Exploration of High Royds, however I realise this will place a limit on future visits and continued documentation of its fall into Mother Earth’s Reclamation Yard. Of course, I would like to see the demise of the structures that created the crass need for such places.
But we at least owe it to those who were beaten, abused and drugged against there will, had medical experiments done on them against there will, to ensure places such as High Royds are documented and left standing as reminder of the inhumanity of Capitalism, and for me to see it as a ruin is far better than the commercial gain and opportunity as a Mono-Suburbia, it is just another repeat of what this place once was before its close in 2003.
Myself, I love the omnipresent ghost of the past, love seeing it slowly decay into nothing.
This why I do what we name as urban exploration, the photos I take document the hidden beauty when mother earth’s reclamation yard kicks in, I love the peeling paint, the weeds growing out the walls, if any one has read Day Of The Triffids, it goes some place to explain how fragile this all is, of course we owe it to the sheer arrogance and pomposity of places like High Royds, if only it was built as a community to replace the slums, that many had come from.
Of course it seemed to offer more, but it soon become just another prison, standing in this epic place, you feel the trapped soul of humanity, you can hear the screams of the tortured and abused, it leaves you cold, it can do nothing but haunt you.
You know you should only visit once, but something compels you to go time and time again, I have been an inmate in Middlewood Hospital, I watched its demise and danced on its ruins, it was grand to watch it become nothing, I only wish I had taken images but just sometimes the memory serves better, it has left me cold and haunted by my visit to High Royds, no doubt I shall return a couple more times and I would like to put T om Waits on the player (the whole world is green) and have one last dance in the ballroom with the ghost of yesterday, and no doubt cry as I do so..
