File:Hanwell aerial view.jpg

The area shown is covered by Grid Ref: 514552,179994 ( TQ 145 799 GB Grid) and is looking West.

Taken in the first half of the 1920's, The row of trees across the top denotes Windmill Lane (A 4127), in the right corner this road joins the Uxbridge Road (A 4020) just before the railway bridge known as 'Iron Bridge' that (still in 2018) carries the Great Western railway line (Paddington to Bristol) between Hanwell and Southall railway stations. On the left side of the image is a 'Flight of Locks' on the Grand Union Canal, Brentford arm. Note the two water balance storage pools to the left of a lock, just above this lock was the asylum water-gate leading into a rectangular basin within the walls, this was used to bring coal and hops into the asylum and to send out excess farm produce. Coal for fire-places, hops for beer manufacture.

Just below the canal basin is the graveyard - if you died in an asylum you were often buried there - an option to save family embarrassment. In the early 1990s these graves were removed by the UK government Home Office in order to build a medium secure unit. Religious leaders consecrated a parcel of land to the left of the Grand Union Canal and oversaw the reburial of these graves

The buildings nearest the camera up to the church comprised the male wards. Note that by this time various extensions, toilet and dormitory accommodation, had been added to the original corridor blocka.

In the middle, is the church with it's tower, this being the front of the hospital with the main entrance 'gate-house' on the Uxbridge Road just in shot far right. To the left of the church was the ballroom and to the left of that the eight-sided centre of the facility and the divide between male and female areas. To the left of that was the Medical Superintendent's house and garden, and left again kitchens and workshops.

Above the eight-sided centre were the female wards with the laundry chimney visible far left. Beyond these are new white roofed 'bungalow' wards laid out along a diagonal corridor, these male wards were build for World War One 'shell-shock' troops. Note that new more suitable wards were built in the area top-left in the late 1920s (later known as the Adelaide & Ellis blocks). The white-roofed wards were then partly demolished to make way for yet more male 'bungalow' style wards built for the mentally injured from World War Two (People may remember these as being named after rivers: Avon, Clyde, Conway etc.. Today we would say these patients were suffering from Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).