St Edward's Mental Hospital Chapel, Cheddleton - November 2012

St Edward's Asylum was constructed between 1895 and 1899. It provided a welcome overflow to the nearby St Georges Asylum in Stafford and St. Matthew's Asylum at Burntwood. It was later renamed to St Edwards Hospital. Set in an amazing woodland it has been carefully converted into residential use since closure of the hospital. By far the most impressive feature is the water tower now converted into apartments on 8 floors. The water tower in its original use could have held 161 tones of water.

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Somewhere we've been watching for a while, on a spur of the moment idea from Humpa we decided to stop by and have a look here on the way back home. It's recently been purchased by a couple who live on the estate and their plan is to convert it into a house. Luckily they happened to be there just at the right time so we asked if they minded us having a mooch. Sadly the majority of the interior has been sold off by the previous owner of the building, but nevertheless it was still good to finally see inside properly. There's some bits and pieces left including the pipe organ (minus it's pipes, which have been sold) and the relatively intact windows.

After we'd had a look around inside we were invited to have a look around in the "cellar", myself and Humpa jumped at the chance while Jasp went for a sleep in the car. Not really sure how it can be described as a cellar, it's mostly about 1.5 foot tall. Not a lot down there, a few old light fittings and a lot of mold, still was worth a look but only had my phone on me so the photos aren't great. After a while of crawling and getting suitably filthy we found our way out.

Big thanks for the new owners for letting us look around!

The front of the chapel. One side, the windows were in need of repairs. Inside, as stated before it was mostly already stripped out. The roof structure was nice. A door way and switches. A decorative screen. The organ minus pipes. Looking back towards the entrance. In the cellar. The collection of lights we discovered. The water tower and some of the new build houses.