VIRTUAL TOUR Part Five: Maternity

The CRCMH is very well know for its maternity section. Locally, at least. It has been estimated that some 60,000 babies have been born in these wards during the working life of the hospital. Indeed, if you are a Maidonian, it's highly unlikely that you don't know at least one person who was born here - it's a local institution. At any given time, about half of our exploration party would have entered the world within these walls - and it was always good to see their reaction upon returning for a look. So, what is it like now? Well, unlike the "sensible" layout of the Western wards, the maternity section is a mish-mash of irregular rooms. This might help to explain the confusion over the precise Flincher experience spot which was somewhere in this area between the X-Ray Department and the base of The Grand Corridor. Today, maternity, like the other wards, mainly consists of a furniture-less empty space with rubble thrown everywhere. This whole area is not a place we spent very much time in at all - and to be honest, you might even go so far as to call it dull in comparison with the rest of the site.

However, a few things do remain that give the place a "homely" feel like, for instance, the mirror which still hangs on the wall here. Well, bits of it do. But there aren't too many clues as to the original purpose of the section. The most obvious ones perhaps are a few drawings on the walls, clearly created with children in mind - such as one featuring the perennial favourite Winnie The Pooh.

There are other things that you wouldn't really want to associate with a maternity unit. This broken sink, for example, has something with the appearance of blood dripping down its sides. It's probably not actually blood - but it's not all that pleasant all the same.

We were probably the first explorers to have ever gained entry into the maternity department from the outside. When we first came here, every door that opens onto the outside was firmly closed. Here you can see Ormrod-Spink and "Launchpad" doing their best to create a shortcut between maternity and the Southern outbuildings (which is a far more complicated journey if you're going to make the trip inside the main building).

And so we find ourselves once again outside in the open air. Here, "Launchpad" examines the humourous shutter constructions on the maternity windows (I say humourous because they look like something that Wile. E. Coyote might conjure up).

From here, it is but a short fresh-air stroll to one of the creepiest places on the entire site. So creepy, in fact, that a former patient described it as being terrifying whilst it was still operational - let alone now. So let's take a look shall we?...