INSIDE ROTTING ST SENAN’S HOSPITAL
THREE YEARS AFTER THE LAST PATIENTS MOVED OUT, ST SENAN’S HOSPITAL IS RAPIDLY DISINTEGRATING INTO DISREPAIR, DESPITE BEING IDENTIFIED AS BEING OF NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE BY THE DEPARTMENT OF ARTS, HERITAGE AND THE GAELTACHT. DAVID TUCKER REPORTS
ONE of the most significant institutional buildings in Ireland is being left to rot.
St Senan’s Hospital, on the outskirts of Enniscorthy, has been identified as being of national significance in the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht’s national inventory of architectural heritage, yet three years after its last patients moved on, it is in a deplorable state and it’s getting worse.
Mental health campaigner Colette Nolan recently gained access to the old building with the help of a former member of staff. What she found stunned and appalled her. ‘Some of it is shocking, there are carcasses of dead birds on the upper floors and there is lead and copper gone missing out of the roof, so it’s just open to the elements,’ she said.
‘I’d imagine it’s going to be let go the way the old county hospital went in Wexford. The OPW and the HSE don’t seem to want to maintain it.. there has been a fence put around the back because of the amount of vandalism and breakins that have been taking place, but that’s all,’ said Colette.
‘I’m a mental health campaigner and can see all sorts of uses for it.. they are putting a €23 million extension at Wexford General Hospital, which they can’t staff. I’m sure parts of St Senan’s wouldn’t cost that much to refurbish, with something like an acute ward, a detox ward or an innovate centre.’
‘I’ve heard talk of colleges being incorporated in the grounds, the possibilities are endless but unfortunetely we’re looking at another county hospital,’ said Colette.
Wexford-based councillor and mental health campaigner Davy Hynes said what was happening, or rather the lack of action at St Senan’s, was scandalous.
‘It’s in a sorry state and is testament to bad management in our health system.. it’s just being left to rot like the old county hospital.. there should be something done with it, even at this late stage,’ he told this newspaper.
County councillor and former Wexfor Mayor Cllr George Lawlor said that that if something isn’t seriously done to tackle St Senan’s ‘we will see yet another iconic ruin on the skylines of Wexford’.
‘ The last thing the HSE will do is develop these buildings,’ he said, ’we have seen with our own county hospital what happens to these buildings in a relatively short space of time and its is rapidly heading in that direction,’ he said.
The county council is putting together a plan for it that can only be welcomed.
Despite its archtitectural credentials, St Senan’s, which was built in Italianate style for the then-huge sum of €40,000, is not listed as a protected structure in the Co Wexford development plan 2013-2019.
In 2010, it was described by the Mental Health Commission as ‘dilapidated, depressing and not fit for human habitation.’
The HSE is on the record as saying that ‘ the future use of the building, in addition to plans for the adjacent lands, is under review.’
The National Intventory of Architectural Heritage inventory describes St Senan’s as an impressive large-scale hospital built as the Wexford County Lunatic Asylum by Patrick Kerr (fl. 1865), contractor, to designs prepared by the Farrell and Bell partnership with later interventions carried out to a scheme proposed by C.A. Owens (fl. 1899): such attributions put to rest the legend that has become part of the local folklore whereby it has been stated that the plans for the hospital were mixed up with the proposal for an Indian palace during, variously, the Crimean or the Franco-Prussian Wars.
‘Occupying an elevated position overlooking the River Slaney, the hospital remains a renowned landmark in the locality with the soaring towers making a pleasing impression punctuating the skyline,’ it says.