Jeremy Gibbs aka RomanyWG is an urban explorer who takes stunning photographs of his wanderings. One place he explored was Hellingly Hospital in East Sussex, prior to its 2011 demolition. This psychiatric hospital opened its doors in 1903 in order to accommodate the overcrowding at the Sussex County Asylum. The asylum was designed by George T. Hine, the consultant architect for the Commission of Lunacy, the government body responsible for the UK’s mental health facilities. The beauty of RomanyWG’s photos is how they capture the energy of the place; asylums are places that housed massive amounts of emotion and energy, and looking at these photos I can almost feel the claustrophobic pressure in my head and tightening of my chest that places like this cause in me. The screams, wails and laughter that soaked into the walls of Hellingly are palpable in his photos, and tell a story of its heyday even in such a state of decay. Check out his Hellingly series below and go to his Flickr to see more of his work.
