St Eglantine's Asylum, Cork

What a day! Himself was heading to Cork to indulge in a super duper new lens - wide-angle macro zoom (oops)  since you ask - and I decided to go along for the craic. We don't shop together so arranged to meet later in the English market which has an excellent café. My shopping requirements were achieved in about 5 minutes - Debenhams had a 25% off sale - and then I decided to have an adventure. Several years ago whilst on a school trip, the coach got lost in the back streets of Cork and ended up in front of the most incredible huge abandoned building. This has remained in my mind! A little investigation and I had discovered it was St Kevin's Mental Asylum, actually one of two colossal mental asylums built in 1845. I had always wanted to go back! Today seemed as good as ever.
I hired a taxi and asked to be taken to the old asylum (no comment please). Yes madam he said and that's about as much as we could understand of each other - he thick Cork, me thick English. Anyway I was deposited and told to go upwards. I did. OMG!! The most astonishing building I have ever seen. And not even the one I was looking for! Actually a suite of three buildings joined together in order to house 500 inmates. I walked past a couple of chaps working, attempting to look nonchalant. There was a huge barbed wire fence and a multitiude of warning notices but ... there was also a small gap. I loitered but it was irresistable. I slipped through. A yell went up behind me. I advanced, charm and smiles to the fore. A very pleasant man. He told me the building had been empty for 20 years but they were slowly restoring it and making it into flats. Not a bother if I wanted to take photos but not to go inside as the slates were falling. I agreed - far too spooky-looking to venture in on my own anyway. Turrets, Venetian windows, curlicues, ravens and a doom-laden presence. Imagine being incarcerated here. But this was not all - ahead I could see yet another colossal building - this one bright red. Another asylum, the one I had originally seen and now in a serious state of abandonment. I scrapped through a human shaped hole in the fence and did a brief recce. Apparently the two asylums were joined by a tunnel and combined they form the longest building in Europe - over a mile long! It was all pretty grim and the statue of Our Lady had been painted a zombie green.
I then walked back into the city - full of interest as the route past some fine though shabby buildings, went over an ornate bouncy pedestrian bridge ( de shaky bridge - thank you Michael!), followed the banks of the Lee, through Fitzgerald park and the contraversial pink sky garden, wondered at a man with a papier maché head, past fine old Georgian houses, eventually  arriving back near St Francis Church which had its own shop displaying a multitide of statues suitable for grottos. I was entranced.
Starving by the time I arrived in the English market for a goat's cheese toastie. It was full of very bossy Spanish ladies fretting over the chowder. Great day.

More pix from the walk
More about the asylums   plus some seriously good photos, and he went inside!