HSE puts St Senan’s psychiatric hospital on market at €780,000

The former St Senan's psychiatric hospital in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, is to be offered for sale at a knockdown price by the Health Service Executive. Waterford auctioneers Purcell Properties are guiding €780,000 for the 49-bay, three-storey redbrick blocks with five towers and an overall floor area of 12,077sq m (130,000sq ft). It served as a county asylum when it first opened in 1868 and continued to provide a range of medical services until its closure in 2015.

Standing high above the Slaney Valley on the edge of Enniscorthy, the Italianate-style buildings could be converted into a variety of uses including a hotel, leisure centre, nursing home, office complex, educational facility or refugee accommodation.

The buildings stand on a site extending to 46.3 acres, including 15 acres zoned for residential use.

Close by, Purcell Auctioneers are also guiding €630,000 for a separate landholding extending to 44 acres, which is to be auctioned on February 7th. Although zoned for a housing development, it is likely to remain in agricultural use because of its out-of-town location and poor access road.

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The former hospital has attractive ornate facades with red brick and white paisley brick reveals for the windows and an impressive range of towers to store water and increase pressure in the pipes. An Taisce has described the complex as “one of the most impressive 19th-century institutional buildings in the country”. One report suggests that it was built at a cost of £40,0000, which was a considerable sum at the time.

Local legend has it that the design drawings for the hospital were mixed up with a proposal for an Indian palace during the Crimean War in the 1850s.

The story gained credence in the early part of the last century but did not conform with the architectural history, which showed that the Enniscorthy building was designed by the renowned Board of Works architects of the day, the Farrell & Bell Partnership.

When completed 1868, the hospital accommodated 70 patients, mainly from Co Wexford.

Within a short time, the numbers had climbed to 280 after patients were moved there from a range of prisons and asylums around the country. By 1915, the numbers had peaked at 570patients – as well as 350 staff – because of the arrival of casualties from the trenches in the Great War.

The buildings have changed little over the years.