Inside eerie ruins of abandoned Victorian-era asylum that’s being transformed into a luxury 5-star hotel & spa
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A 200-year-old Victorian asylum is set to be transformed into a stunning five-star hotel and spa. Photographs taken from inside the eerie building after it was abandoned have now been unearthed. Once called The Crichton Institution for Lunatics, it was taken over by the NHS after the Second World War and housed patients until 2011.
![[Crichton Hall in Dumfries, a former psychiatric hospital planned to be converted into a five-star hotel.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/mental-asylum-five-star-hotel-965540720.jpg?strip=all&w=310)
The hospital was founded by wealthy widower Elizabeth Crichton in 1839 after her initial plans to build a university there were shot down. It was bought in 2019 for just £50,000 by the owners of Fonab Castle Hotel in Pitlochry. NHS Dumfries and Galloway said the deal would save the service £800,000 a year in running costs.
![[Interior of Crichton Hall, showing a light blue railing and netting.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/mental-asylum-five-star-hotel-965540667.jpg?strip=all&w=310)
Due to the unsettling nature of the building, having housed thousands of distressed inmates who were abused in the early 1800s due to lack of education and arguably empathy for mental illness, it attracts ghost-hunters and gore-seekers. Members of Dark Explores K, PJ Exploration, Peaky Explorers and Derelict Detectives were able to catch a glimpse inside the abandoned hospital to document it ahead of the huge renovation.
![[Interior of Crichton Hall, showing a tiled floor and walls, and a stainless steel sink.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/mental-asylum-five-star-hotel-965540665.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
It had space for 120 beds, with 54 of those beds allocated for private paying patients and 50 for those sectioned under the Lunacy Act of 1890. The rooms were still lined with Victorian tiles and one of the huge doors was decorated with a Rennie Mackintosh-style stained glass pattern.
![[Interior of Crichton Hall, a former mental asylum being converted into a five-star hotel.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/mental-asylum-five-star-hotel-965538862.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
The spiral staircase with sky blue painted banisters was sectioned off with a wire mesh attached to the ceiling for safety reasons. While many asylums of that era were cold and clinical, Crichton founders clearly had an eye for detail and interior design.
![[Interior of Crichton Hall, showing a statue in a niche.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/mental-asylum-five-star-hotel-965540658.jpg?strip=all&w=310)
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