Explore #17c (third revisit, by moon and morning light): Severalls Asylum, Colchester, Essex – May 2014

Sevs holds a special place in the hearts of many Urban Explorers, including my own. Famed for its beautiful decaying corridors, morgue, peeling paint and Michael the legendary security guard it deserves more than one visit.

After my epic 8-hour explore in November 2013 (see that report for full history and many of Sevs’ highlights), and the fun and festivities of ‘Santa Sevs’ in December 2013, it was time to pay the old girl a revisit.

The plan this time was to arrive at 2am to get some shots of Sevs by moonlight, followed by a few more at dawn. There is a running joke in the Urbex community of the fondness of the mainstream press (and the Daily ~~Fail~~ Mail in particular) to refer to any urbex locations with a bit of decay as “eerie”, “haunting”, “spooky” etc etc, which has lead to many tongue-in-cheek memes and comments on photos:

etc, etc.

However, walking down the broken and decaying corridors of a long-abandoned mental asylum in the middle of the night, using only the wan moonlight filtering in through broken windows might indeed properly be considered to be on the ‘eerie’ side. However, I must admit that I just found the whole experience quite relaxing and thoroughly enjoyable – although if I hadn’t already been a few times in daylight and didn’t have 2 other explorers (Marlon Bones and Darren from Desolate Nation) with me then I might perhaps have felt somewhat differently!

On with the photos…

[As always, click on a photo to VIEW LARGE]

The moon shining in through a broken window, taken at 2.48am.

The famous bed in Squirrels Boutique, taken at 3.14am.

The kitchens as pre-dawn light began to creep into the sky…

…and one of the famous corridors at dawn.

Once the sun had risen we spent another hour or so exploring a few bits that I hadn’t seen before, with more corridor and green-floor decay…

At one point Marlon decided to go walkabout. Whilst this sort of behaviour is not particularly sensible or condoned by me, a key tenet of Urban Exploration is that each explorer sets their own boundaries and decides what is and isn’t acceptable on their own terms.