St Crispin's Hospital

Work started on the hospital in 1873.[1] It was designed by Robert Griffiths using a corridor layout and opened as the Northampton Mental Hospital in 1876.[1] Additional blocks for children with mental health difficulties and for epileptics were completed in 1887.[1] It served as a military hospital during the First World War and after the war it became Northampton Mental Hospital.[2] It had joined the National Health Service in 1948 and two female patient villas were completed in 1954.[1]

The hospital was used as a filming location in the 1977 series of Doctor Who, in a six-part story called The Talons of Weng-Chiang. The mortuary was used to represent a Victorian operating theatre.[3]

Following the introduction of Care in the Community in the early 1980s the hospital went into a period of decline and closed in 1995.[4] The children's block and the superintendents' house were developed by Taylor Wimpey for residential use between 2005 and 2008[5] and a small area was applied for the construction of Berrywood Hospital, a modern mental health facility.[6]

In August 2014, over 80 Firefighters responded to an emergency call as a large fire broke out.[4] One of the buildings was also seriously damaged in March 2015 after it was set on fire by arsonists.[7]

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  The Main Hall held up with scaffolding after a major fire
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  The Main Hall and Clock Tower
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  The ward blocks have been stripped of most of their original features