When Whitchurch Hospital opened in 1908, it was Cardiff’s largest mental health hospital. It had around 750 patients, where women who had children out of wedlock were housed and some schizophrenics were locked up indefinitely. The main hospital covered 5 acres and consisted of 10 wards, 5 for men and 5 women. Whitchurch Hospital finally closed its doors in April 2016. The building has been mostly derelict since closing down after more than 100 years of providing services to patients.

credit: Capt Gorgeous

It looks like something out of a science fiction movie, inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone. A former top secret military object used by the Soviet Union, the mysterious giant antenna system called the Duga-3, was the origin of an extremely powerful but anonymous signal between 1976 to 1989. The sharp, tapping signal came without warning, disrupting broadcasts and communications worldwide. Transmission power on some woodpecker transmitters was estimated to be as high as 10 MW EIRP. It was built in the 70\’s as an early missile detection system (over-the-horizon radar system). It was also called the Steel Yard hence its distinctive appearance. The towers are incredible feats of engineering: the big ones measure 479 feet tall and spans a length of 2,460 feet (nearly half a mile). The antenna was deactivated in 1989.

credit:  Michael Kötter

The Buck Hill Inn was built in 1901 and once was listed as one of the top ten convention centers in the U.S. The thousand-acre retreat featured amenities such as an amphitheater, a 27-hole golf course, horseback riding, an indoor pool, swimming, and tennis. For decades the resort thrived, and would expand until eventually becoming a 400-room, 300,000 square-foot facility. The end of the Buck Hill Inn began with a downturn in business from the late 1970s into the 1980s. In 1990, the owners closed it for good. Numerous attempts have tried, and failed, to restore the century-old resort.

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Castle Miranda has stood in Celles since 1866, Belgium, but has long been abandoned to decay and rot. When the French Revolution heated up, the politically active Liedekerke-Beaufort family were forced to abandon their castle in the Walloon region of southern Belgium. The castle is also known as Chateau Noisy after the children’s home it was turned into – following the Second World War – by the National Railway Company of Belgium for the children of employees. It stayed a children’s home until 1980. After becoming too expensive to maintain, Miranda Castle was abandoned in 1991. A fire in 1995 destroyed part of the roof, and dry rot has set into the wood. The building is still owned by Liedekerke-Beaufort family, who, following the fire, stripped the castle of its more valuable components.

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This hospital complex was designed by architect Heino Schmieden and built in 1898 in the Southwest portion of Berlin near the city of Potsdam. Originally built as a tuberculosis sanatorium this massive complex was converted into a military hospital during World War I by the German Imperial Army. In 1945, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the German nation was divided in two. At this point in history the USSR took control of the facility turning it into a Soviet military hospital. Even after the reunification of Germany on October 3, 1990 the Soviet Army remained in control of the hospital until 1995. Some sections of the hospital remain in operation as a neurological rehabilitation center and as a center for research and care for victims of Parkinsons disease. The remainder of the complex, including the surgery, the psychiatric ward, and a rifle range, was abandoned in 2000.

credit: Moisturizing Tranquilizers

Kolmanskop is located in the Namib Desert in Namibia, Africa. The desert ghost town was named after transport driver Johnny Coleman, which Kolmanskop means Coleman’s Hill in Afrikaans. It is an abandoned diamond mining town in the Namib desert, a few kilometres inland from the port town of Lüderitz. Founded in 1908 when a rail worker named Zacharias Lewala in the area discovered a diamond, the town enjoyed nearly fifty years of history until it was abandoned in 1954 when the diamond mines finally dried up.

credit: coda