Is This The Most Evil Building In Britain?

Stourgate Moor House stood on the edge of town for just over a century before its closure in 1987. Built in 1881 as the Stourgate and District Pauper Lunatic Asylum, it was later renamed Stourgate Moor House and operated as a psychiatric hospital until funding cuts forced its closure. The building has stood empty since.

The asylum was designed to hold around 35 patients, though records from the early twentieth century show it was frequently over capacity. Local historian Meredith Bradwell has spent the past several years cataloguing the surviving admission ledgers, held now at the county archive. “Most of what people assume about the place is wrong,” she said. “It wasn’t a place of horror. It was underfunded and overcrowded, like most institutions of its kind, but the day to day of it was administrative rather than sinister. As far as we know there were no evil experiments performed at the site nor did anyone die, chained to a chair whilst being tortured in the basement. Probably.”

The building’s reputation as haunted dates largely from the 1990s, after it stood empty for several years and became a target for trespassers. A number of ghost walks have operated on and off since, taking visitors around the perimeter after dark. The current operator, Stourgate Ghost Tours, runs walks on the first Friday of each month, departing from the car park on Cinder Lane.

Tour guide Michael Fenn has led walks at the site for eleven years. “People want something to happen,” he said. “Most nights nothing does. Cold spots, yes, but that’s an old building with broken windows. I’ve never seen anything I couldn’t explain.”

Killjoy Mr Fenn said the most commonly reported disturbance was a sound resembling a door closing in the middle of the night. “I’ve heard that one a few times,” he said. “I put it down to the building settling. It’s often around 3:17am so that regularity suggets it is a normal occurence.”

The council has confirmed no redevelopment plans are currently in place for the site, which remains fenced off pending a structural survey.

Is it the most evil building in Britain? Almost certainly, yes, although more evidence is needed for us to be sure. If you’ve stayed there overnight and woken up with white hair let us know (not if you had white hair before). Have you ever looked into a mirror there and seen something behind you, turned around and it was no longer there? Or, maybe you said, ‘Ben Harkins’ three times and he appeared (we don’t want to know if you went there with a live person called Ben Harkins). Contact the Bugle today.