Urban Exploration and Afterlife
Because of its immense size and relatively undamaged state, Cane Hill became extremely popular among urban explorers in the 1990s and early 2000s. On his extensive website, Simon Cornwell has described the complex nature of the Cane Hill Cult.
Cornwell's contribution to the post-modern literature of urban exploration has featured Cane Hill as a focal point of personal and psychological recovery. Styling himself as a "guerilla historian", Cornwell has presented his compulsive "invasions" of the asylum in their historical context in an institution of compulsory detention. Cane Hill, for decades a refuge for the abandoned and the dispossessed, was itself abandoned and in his many expeditions to its interior, Cornwell has recorded the experience physically, emotionally and photographically. The work of these urban explorers is akin to that of psychotherapists who explore the psychological structures of emotional trauma and bereavement.
In later years the interior of the buildings deteriorated greatly. Damage and lack of maintenance caused rot and water damage, causing the wooden floors to collapse in many of the outlying buildings. The water tower of the hospital housed a low-power analogue television repeater belonging to National Grid Wireless. This was powered by a diesel generator, since there was no mains power supplied to the site after the switchgear was destroyed following an arson attack.
In 2006, Hipposcope Films started planning to film a documentary about the history of the asylum. The site's owners, English Partnerships, who purchased the site in April 2007, apparently gave permission for Hipposcope to access Cane Hill. Filming inside the asylum was due to start according to the project's site in late 2007/early 2008 but there had since been no new news updates and the site has now been taken down.
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