T H E   D E R E L I C T   M I S C E L L A N Y

The National Union for Christian Social Service was founded in 1894 by Congregationalist minister the Rev. J.F.B. Tinling, influenced by the writings of missionary Julie Sutter, whose pamphlet A Colony of Mercy detailed her visit in 1893 to the Evangelische Heil- und Pflegeanstalt für Epileptische (Evangelical Institute of Healing and care for Epileptics) in Bielefeld, Germany, and proposed several small-scale colonies providing for the education and training of the homeless, unemployed and epileptic. The Union also drew on the work of William Booth and the Salvation Army at the Hadleigh Farm Colony, a 700-acre estate in Essex established in 1891 by William Booth as part of a plan to rescue the destitute from the squalor of London slums, and on the ideas of Congregationalist minister the Rev. John Brown Paton, who advocated for the practical application of Christian socialism through retraining, education and social activism.

In 1896, the organisation purchased St. Piers Farm, a 250-acre agricultural estate near Lingfield and set about establishing a training colony teaching agricultural skills to able-bodied paupers mostly referred by the metropolitan poor law unions. Lingfield Farm Training Colony, as it was known, offered fresh air, good simple food and above all work "not merely [...] for occupation's sake, such as oakum-picking in a reformatory, but work of an elevating character, leaving with the patients a sense of usefulness, of still being wanted; scope for ambition." (Sutter).

Administration block, c. 1930 (D. Gregory collection). Administration block, 2024. Old school block. Art department. Technology department. I couldn't find the Cycledromes, but Ed "Stewpot" Stewart presented Junior Choice on the BBC from 1968–1979. MORE PICTURES [+/-] Hostel and staff annexe. Foundation stones Vandalised corridor linking the hostel and staff annexe. Among other things, Propranolol is used as an anticonvulsant, anxiolytic and anti-migraine drug. Waste incinerator I think? Annexe stairs. View from annexe to main hostel block. Hostel block. Looking across to one of the dormitories. Newer classrooms at the back of the site. One of two padded rooms. Newer school buildings. Staff housing, Carewell Wood. Red Cross House - wards built for soldiers with acquired epilepsy in 1919. Playtime's over. Back to top.

1899 saw the arrival of 120 epileptic children, many of them formerly housed in workhouses and lunatic asylums; three dormitories were erected, but it was not until 1904 that a dedicated school building was provided for their education, under schoolmistress Miss Kate Caston - this became the focus of the institution today known as St Piers School. By 1911, the main focus of activities at Lingfield was the care and training of epileptics, and the institution became known as the Lingfield Epileptic Colony. The First World War saw part of the site dedicated to the treatment and rehabilitaion of soldiers with acquired epilepsy caused by brain injury, a specialist ward, Red Cross House, being opened for this purpose in 1919. In 1957 the Lingfield Epileptic Colony became the Lingfield Hospital School for Epileptic Children, all adult residents being moved to Chalfont Epileptic Colony in Buckinghamshire.

Children and young people with neurological conditions other than epilepsy were admitted from 1972 and in 1989 the school was renamed St Piers. The school building, together with a further education college, residential, medical and farm buildings were designated The National Centre for Young People with Epilepsy in 2001. From 2011 to 2016, new facilities were opened to replace the aging classrooms, and with a move away from termly-to weekly boarding and day attendance, most of the dormitories and staff housing became redundant. The disused buildings - about hald the campus, were earmarked for demolition, part of a deal agreed with a residential care provider to build a new care village, and have become increasingly dilapidated.

I'm not entirely sure what it is that security actually do at Lingfield, but it doesn't seem to involve stopping people from trashing the buildings. After I'd finished exploring, unhindered except for a group of feral twelve-year-olds making enough noise to wake the dead, I had a pleasant chat with two hi-vis clad guards against a background of sickening crashes and breaking glass as another group appeared to be using the staff hostel as their own personal rage room. Maybe I caught them on a bad day - to their credit, the dormitories were pretty well secured at least.