HM Stanley Hospital closed in 2011 and was in the process of being developed into a new housing estate when we photographed it here in 2020 (Sara Pagoda, Frances Williams). We were keen to capture the last evidence of the hospital before it was ‘cleared and cleaned-up’. We jokingly referred to our visit as a ‘ghost hunt’ (for the lingering memory of HM Stanley.)


We had both previously written on the topic of ‘hauntings’ in hospital sites as part of their academic work into architecture and collective memory. We interpreted the ‘lost spaces’ here in light of the memory of Stanley, a controversial figure after whom the local hospital was named. ‘the only hospital in the UK named after a mass murdered’ - Wanda Zyborska

We were interested in the site as one of ‘social cleansing’, not just of the decrepit former hospital site itself - though regeneration processes by corporate developers - but he white-washing of the legacy of Stanley himself, at that time a live debate in Denbigh through his memorialisation by way of a contemporary sculptor in Denbigh Town Square.


Artist Wanda Zyborska credits the former workhouse - pictures here - as the place where Stanley was formed and showed (though the abuse he suffered here as an orphan boy.) She had recommended a visit to the site after picking up one the stones here to become the cold ‘heart’ of a sculpture of Stanley she made by way of alternate art work.


In this way, the whole question of naming, remembering and forgetting (as well as as processes of commercialisation and ‘arts washing’ ) were somehow entangled at this site. Local people still refer to the site as Stanley hospital, despite the fact it has been re-named after Stanley’s rival explorer, Livingstone, with the housing development re-named Livingstone Place.