Spiritual and Paranormal Investigation and Research Team

 

Old Barony Hospital Complex, Nantwich.

History Of The Building/Site

In 1780 a workhouse was built on barony road in nantwich.
It was 3 storeys high with a single-storey entrance block at the front.
A school designed by John Aldersey Davenport was then built in 1879. On the ground floor were school rooms and day rooms, a dining room and kitchen were also on the ground floor.
The upper floor consisted of dormitories.

In 1890 an infirmary was built on the east side of the workhouse costing £4,500, it had 70 beds and also there were day rooms for patients and seperate wards for special cases.
In 1894 a 70 bed womens hospital was added to the site and across the way was a living facility for 15 nurses.

 

After 1912 the workhouse became officially the Nantwich poor Law institution and had 308 inmates and 18 officers in residence.
After 1930 the institution became known as the Barony county institution and hospital.
Under the national health service it became known as the Barony Hospital which finally closed in full in 1994.
The workhouse building is now used by local health trust offices and the former childrens home is now used as a health services call centre.

The building we have been requested to investigate is now known as frederick house and houses offices for different companies and also our local radio station the Cat FM.

Many reports have been recieved of strange goings on within these buildings quite recently such as voices, footsteps, smells and objects being moved around or disappearing then reappearing elsewhere.

Some people who work within these buildings have had the feeling of someone being present and being followed around.

Below you can see an aerial view of the Old Barony Hospital complex in full, highlighted is the location of CatFM studios for which the Spirit Cheshire team were requested to visit after some unusual events took place.

Aerial view provided by Google Earth

Pre Vigil Visit

 

We have done numerous vigils at this building now and it would be totally impossible to document every single thing that has happened on vigils so we would like to start by highlighting some events that have happened upto now as this is an ongoing investigation and havent come to a conclusion on what we think is going on in there yet.

We were invited onto the CatFm which broadcasts from this building by Neil and Louise Davis on their Sunday roast show to talk about our group.
When we had finished our show Neil took us on a tour of the building and shown us a few empty rooms and told us there had been some stories floating around that some of the presenters had been saying they had felt a presence and a presenter even had his keys moved while he was on air
We then appeared on the Chris McGarrigle paranormal special on the Cat FM where he himself told us of the same stories Neil and louise had talked about on their show.
While on air we invited Neil and Louise to attend one of our vigils with us and they came out with us and witnessed a few events for themselves at the M club location that we were in process of investigating. All went well on the investigation night and Neil asked us if we would like to set up some video cameras in the Barony building while he was on air one sunday which we were happy to do.

Rachel Griffiths went down there one sunday afternoon and set up 2 video cameras facing each other and a dictaphone in one of the unused second floor offices and locked the door and took the key with them so nobody could enter the room and contaminate any of the recordings.
Rachel Griffiths left also a carrier bag with some food in and a bottle of drink as she didnt want to carry it around the building with her while she walked around the area talking to Louise Davis while Neil was on air.
Rachel and Louise did their own mini vigil in one of the empty ground floor rooms and witnessed what they can only describe as an outline of a lady in the corner of one room, this disturbed Louise a little as she hadnt seen anything like this before so they left the room and told Neil. The investigations have gone on from there.
The interesting thing was, when we went through the camera footage there was nothing but a distinctive sound of a carrier bag being moved which lasted around 20 seconds.
This carrier bag sound was also on the dictaphone, due to the fact the room was sealed and Louise and Rachel had the key we decided to launch a full investigation of the building which has being going on now for a few months where it has been a mixture of emotions, we have really enjoyed the investigations at the building upto now and will be adding some more recent events to this page within the next few days.