May 3, 2017
Hanwell, London; 1.5.2016. This, glimpsed over the wall by the canal towpath, might be the Orchard Centre, ‘a medium secure psychiatric unit for women’ opened in 2007. Alternatively, it might be the Wells Adolescent Unit (2006), a ‘medium secure unit … designed to accommodate up to ten adolescents’. See Wikipedia (Hanwell Asylum) for the complex history of asylums and mental health facilities on this site, beginning with the (1st Middlesex) County Asylum (also known as the Hanwell Insane Asylum and the Hanwell Pauper and Lunatic Asylum), built in 1831.