Asylum architecture—reborn as a health club

Claybury Hospital was constructed 1889-1893 as a psychiatric hospital in Woodford Bridge, Essex, England. The hospital was built on the grounds of the Claybury Estate, the landscape of which had been designed by Sir Humphrey Repton in 1789. By the latter 20th century, the hospital fell victim to a new public policy of deinstitutionalization of mental patients, and the future of the historic property was in doubt. With pressure from the preservation community, portions of the complex were converted to condominiums (or flats) and one building, a former chapel, was converted to a health club.

Read

The London Church That's a Swimming Pool

By Will Noble

Londonist

July 29, 2016