Lennoxtown North of Glasgow is where the abandoned Lennox Castle continues to deteriorate to this day, yet its stories live on and will not be taken to its metaphorical grave. The once-beautiful Neo-Norman-style structure served as a hospital for those with learning disabilities, and carries a lot of controversial stories of malnourishment of patients.
Lennox Castle was built in 1837 by architect David Hamilton meant to serve as a majestic castle before meeting its true, much darker fate. It was, actually, someone’s home until the First World War, before temporarily serving as a military hospital. After the war ended, the building was chosen as the new site for a psychiatric hospital by Glasgow City Council and had a £1 million conversion.
Credit: Aerial Dreamers
As a result, Lennox Castle became the largest institution in Scotland for people with learning disabilities after opening its doors in 1936 able to fit 1,200 patients. The castle building was used as a home for nurses, while 20 additional blocks were built housing 60 people each.
During the Second World War, some of the hospital was converted to a maternity ward, where singer Lulu was born in 1948.
The 60s saw Lennox Castle being a designated psychiatric hospital once again, soon showing signs of overcrowding and bad living conditions with a much bigger capacity of 1,700 patients due to low staff numbers and lack of funding. It was reported by the hospital director himself, Alasdair Sim, that a quarter of its patients were underweight and malnourished, saying “he was “sick to the stomach about the plight of these poor people”.
Finally, both patients and staff started to be moved to other hospitals or their own homes in 1987, still years after reports of the maltreatment of people. In 2002, Lennox Castle ceased to be an operational hospital altogether, with the patient living quarters on the land being demolished in 2004.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde told the BBC that Lennox Castle was closing because it was “outdated and did not support a good quality of life”.
“In the early 1990s the health board actively developed a resettlement programme with partner councils and support providers to ensure that people living in Lennox Castle were supported to live in their own homes in their own communities.
The health board funded housing associations to purchase suitable housing and transferred funds to local councils to provide the care and support needed.”
However, the castle building caught fire in 2008 leaving nothing behind but the stone walls. Today, Lennox Castle is just mere ruins, left with its not-so-pleasant past.
Credit: C-Change Scotland
Hughie McIntyre, who painfully remembers his time at the hospital during the 80s after his adoptive parents abandoned him there, told C-Change Scotland: “I didn’t know why I was there, or what I did to deserve this. No one came to see me. I had no family or friends.”
“I was in there for 16 years. I lost the will to survive. It’s scary coming back into this place. I remembered my life in there. I was tortured: beaten, kicked, heavily punched and I had severe injuries. I get nightmares thinking about it. They let you out, but you had to be back in the ward for eight o’clock at night,””
“Then you’ve got to remain in your bed until the staff come on duty. And the staff don’t tap you to wake you up, they grab the bottom of the bed and start bouncing the bed up and down to get you up. When you’re up, you stand at the bottom edge of the bed until you get a headcount. And if you’re not in the ward, they’ll go out looking for you.”