Teaser: Yesterday I walked to a village just outside London that used to be a hospital.
Set-up: I was standing in Croydon High Street and I thought I'd catch the first bus south which turned out to be the 405 to Redhill. Bus fact to keep the bus nerds happy: Almost half of route 405 is in Surrey. Clarification of geography: I stayed aboard the bus beyond Coulsdon until just after the Greater London boundary and hopped off in Hooley. Description of Hooley based on being in it for three minutes: Hooley's a small village on the A23 with a filling station, an off licence, a few old cottages and a nub of streets. It's nothing special. Actual research on Hooley carried out after I got home: If I'd walked quarter of a mile up Star Lane I'd have found Chipstead's grade I listed parish church founded in the 12th century. Hooley spent almost 30 years in Greater London until residents rebelled and voted to return to Surrey. Clarification: Hooley is not the village that used to be a hospital, that's the other side of the railway.
Railway bit to keep the rail nerds happy: The railway is actually two railways, both parallel, both in 30m-deep slots with a very narrow chalk ridge inbetween. One channel is for the Brighton mainline and the other is for the slow line. This is the HooleyCutting and it's susceptible to nasty landslips. You get a good (and slightly surreal) view from Forge Bridge Lane. Reassurance for the reader: The village that used to be a hospital is now only half a mile away. Ironic aside: The developers who converted the hospital into a village spent so much building a decent bridge across the railway that they had to sell off a lot of the site and never built the pub they originally promised. Smug bit for non-drivers: The only main road into the village follows a double hairpin bend. Pedestrians get to take a short cut. Revelation: It's quite a climb up to the village because the village is called Netherne-on-the-Hill and the clue is in the name. Observational interlude: On the ascent I passed a resident finding the climb quite tough and was overtaken by another resident dangling a white sliced loaf.
Finally some history:Netherne Mental Hospital opened on former farmland in 1909. It was built by Surrey County Council because Brookwood Asylum was getting crowded. It housed up to 960 patients in separate symmetrical villa blocks for males and females. Eleanor Roosevelt dropped by in 1948 because treatment was thought to be progressive. The hospital finally closed in 1994. You can read a full history here on the excellent Lost Hospitals of London website. What it looks like now: It looks like a housing estate, obviously, and a very Nineties housing estate at that. Some of the houses are for Surrey folk with a lot of money, some for those with a fair amount of money and in one corner are a few old cottages where hospital staff once lived. The admin block is now flats. A few lucky souls live up the converted water tower. What it looks like from above: I've found aerial shots of the former hospital and the replacement village. What happens in the village: The village hall is hosting a silent disco next week. The village shop sells ready meals, beer and hardware, and does cashback, dry cleaning and fresh coffee. There is no pub for the aforementioned reasons. Link to map in case it helps:Here.
Another teaser: The centrepiece of the village is the green surrounding St Luke's, the hospital's former chapel. All the doors were locked and the only signs said 'Fire Exit' so I assumed there was nothing special inside. I was very wrong, as this video reveals. The numbers bit: About a thousand people live in Netherne-on-the-Hill. The village covers 50 acres. The Green Belt bit: Building an isolated housing estate on the edge of the North Downs was only permitted because the Edwardians desecrated it first. The Low Traffic Neighbourhood bit: Five of the roads have been blocked to discourage ratrunning, and the end result is like one of those mazes in an eight-year-old's puzzle book. Chapel reveal (for those who prefer not to click on video links): What's inside St Luke's is a lovely swimming pool for residents, plus gym plus sauna. Locals know it as the Leisure Centre.
We're getting towards the end now: I walked out of the village via the public footpath on the edge of Tugwood Close. It looked like a simple half mile on OpenStreetMap but was in fact a steep drop down the side of Boxers Wood followed by a sharp climb up the other side of Ditches Shaw. Beechy trunks, ripening ears, glorious. Wry observation: The owners of Boxers Wood specialise in 'private property' notices warning everyone to keep out. Apparently they know who the flytippers are but don't want to be forced to report them to the police, and I thought yeah right pull the other one. The close shave: I met an incredibly enthusiastic labrador halfway down ("she's friendly, she's just very bouncy") and I thank the owner for having her on a lead despite being on a walk in the middle of nowhere, otherwise I'd have flipped from happy to trauma in ten seconds flat.
What I found at the top of the slope: The Greater London boundary, Ditches Lane, Devilsden Wood. Apology: The rest of my walk was much more interesting but I've blogged about it before. Hereabouts are London Loop Section 5 (so you've likely been), Happy Valley (Croydon's recreational jewel), Farthing Downs (the views, the views!) and the southernmostpoint in Greater London. You're not getting all that again, lovely though it was. Glib conclusion: This is why sometimes you should get on a random bus.
