Hand-painted murals in lost subway beneath Leavesden Hospital site

The St Pancras Workhouse and Industrial School officially opened in October of 1870 and cared for children/students, from the ages of 0 to 16 years old, who were housed in a large, Victorian styled building situated within the 60-acre site. By the end of its first year of operation, some 796 children attended daily classroom lessons, held in two separate buildings on the southernmost part of the site, and would spend many additional hours in the industrial school's large, well-equipped workshops learning the trades required to enter the workforce by the age of 14. They would also be put to work manufacturing a variety of items that were then sold on to local business, government agencies or the asylum across the road, as the way that these children earned their keep.

This was until around 1930 when the St Pancras Workhouse and Industrial School closed its doors and the children started to be cared for in smaller facilities or private homes which may have been the early start of what we now know as foster care.

Subway mural paintings, 1995. Image: Cherry Jackson

At the suggestion of Dr H R Stewart, Head Superintendent of the newly renamed Leavesden Mental Hospital, the hospital's management committee arranged to take over the old St Pancras site as an annexe to the main hospital and to extend the care it already provided. The very forward-thinking Dr Stewart wanted his patients/residents to have access to the former industrial school's workshops and machinery, as part of their ongoing physical and occupational therapies as well as assisting them in developing the skills needed to possibly re-enter the work force depending on what level of abilities they had.

Dr H R Stewart, seated centre, 1916. Image: Leavesden Hospital History Associaton

Recognising the very real dangers of moving almost 500 patients and staff several times a day from the main hospital site to the new annexed industrial school by crossing the very busy Asylum Road, Dr Stewart made plans for the construction of a subway/tunnel under the road and in so doing created a safe link between the two sites.

The subway, originally located just a few meters up College Road from where the marked cross walk is now, had long sloping pathways and was used extensively by staff and patients walking from one side of the site to the other, for transporting patients who were in wheelchairs and for moving equipment and supplies from one side to the other by utilising small electric golf cart type vehicles.

Location of subway. Image: Leavesden Hospital History Association

On more than a few occasions, I have heard first-hand accounts of staff who lived on the annexed side of the site, driving their own cars from the main gate, through the subway and into the annexed side of the hospital. This apparently was due to their coming home late, after a night of revelry, and finding the three gates into the annex side, located along Leavesden High Road, locked up tight for the night.

Another story that I often heard and read about was that at some point in its history, the subway had its walls painted with large colourful murals by either the patients or the staff. From 2008 to 2011, during my time working at Leavesden Country Park, I did make several very clandestine digs around the north end of the subway and did indeed find some evidence of these paintings being there.

Subway mural paintings, 1995. Image: Cherry Jackson

Unfortunately, since both ends of the subway were filled in when the hospital closed in 1995, and there was very little if any chance I would get permission from the council to dig any further, I accepted the fact that these hand-painted murals, and the stories they may have told, would be yet another historic feature of the hospital lost to time.

North side of subway, 2015. Image: Martin T Brooks

That was until December 2022 when I received a donation of photographs and documents from a former staff member of the hospital. To my awe and astonishment, within the over 350 photographs and one old video tape, I found several images of the very paintings I had been hoping to get a glimpse of since 2008.

I guess good things do come to those who wait.