Hospital Laundry, Ireland

This old Hospital Laundry closed approximately 15 years ago. The hospital was designed and built in the early 1900s with the intention of serving as a psychiatric facility. Instead, by the time the hospital opened, it was operating as an infectious disease treatment centre.

This building is on the edge of the site and is a low, single-story building. Many of the hospital buildings are undergoing renovation, but it is likely that this buildings future will be demolition. Currently, nearby construction workers are using most of the building for storage of materials. I explored this location on one of my Ireland 2023 Road Trip(s).

Decontaminating infectious laundry

The laundry building is split into two large rooms with a smaller room connecting them. The first room is the laundry sorting. There are wooden signs with stencilled lettering on the walls: dresses, blankets, bags, and sheets. There is also a red weighing scale in this room. In front of this is a pile of red laundry bags; the green of the ferns growing out of them contrasts beautifully.

In the small connecting room is a high-temperature washing machine for soiled or contaminated laundry. This room leads onto the biggest of the three rooms.

The second large room is the biggest, and it is brightly lit. A long skylight runs the length of the room at the apex of the steeply pitched roof. This kind of roof is common on industrial sites. Silver-coloured vents hang from the ceiling. The biggest machine is a big blue one that seems to be a huge ironing machine or clothes press. There is another smaller press on the far wall that seems older. On the wall behind this was the clocking-in and-out station and the old employee entrance. Against the long wall are three large industrial washing machines. These are Kamsin washing machines, some of the biggest available. In addition to standard hospital laundry cycles, these were also able to run deep-clean washes, including soda and bleach. There is a vintage clothes press against another wall, which was possibly my favourite thing to photograph!