Storthes Hall is a part of the township of Kirkburton, West Yorkshire, England. A heavily wooded area, it comprises a single road, Storthes Hall Lane, which links Kirkburton with the nearby villages of Farnley Tyas and Thurstonland. To the immediate north is North Spring Wood. Boothroyd Wood occupies the area to the south whilst Myers Wood can be found to the east. Myers Wood is the site of a medieval iron working site.
A psychiatric hospital operated at Storthes Hall from 1904–1991. It was founded as an asylum and was previously called the Storthes Hall Mental Hospital (1929–1938), the West Riding Mental Hospital (1939–1948), and Storthes Hall Hospital (1949–1991). A former mill owner's house, Storthes Hall Mansion, can be found further down the road heading towards the village centre. This too was a psychiatric hospital, the Mansion Hospital, and operated separately to the one further up the road. It too closed in 1991. It is now a private residence. A book, Storthes Hall Remembered, is available and tells the story of Storthes Hall, written by a nurse who worked there.
The area has some private housing, however the University of Huddersfield supplies most of the occupants due to the campus that occupies part of the site of the former psychiatric hospital, the Storthes Hall Park Student Village. Recent planning permission was granted to a retirement village on the remainder of the hospital site. The site also provides training facilities to Huddersfield Town FC.
Most of the hospital buildings on the Storthes Hall site have been reduced to rubble, including the house that once housed Edward Bryan, which is also in a pitiful state, however one, the administration building, remains upright but is heavily graffitied inside and is run down and dangerous to enter. This building is surrounded by fencing and barbed wire due to its unstable nature. The bar serving the student village, "the Arboretum" is an original building which once housed difficult to manage patients. The hospital's mortuary is still intact. Storthes hall is now home to student from Huddersfield Uni.
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Most of the outbuildings have been demolished but a few remain.
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The road leading to one of the last remaining buildings.
Famous quotes containing the word hall:
“While there we heard the Indian fire his gun twice.... This sudden, loud, crashing noise in the still aisles of the forest, affected me like an insult to nature, or ill manners at any rate, as if you were to fire a gun in a hall or temple.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)