Talgarth hospital

Once upon a time, there were two hospitals to serve the local area. One was at Bronllys, and was partly for physical illnesses and partly a TB hospital, and the other, the mental hospital, was at Talgarth. A farm was attached to each hospital, and one produced meat and the other produced vegetables, for both hospitals.
That arrangement has long gone. Bronllys Hospital (no longer used for TB cases) is under threat, and Talgarth closed as a mental hospital in 1999.
The buildings remain, though, and they're in the news in the B&R this week. The company that owns the hospital now has locked a man out of the workshop he rents there after he refused to pay his rent. He says that the company didn't send him proper invoices and doesn't maintain the buildings properly.

I first saw the inside of Talgarth hospital when it was still a working hospital. It was a bit run down, because they knew they were going to close soon. I was there with a group that wanted to buy the buildings and set up a sort of alternative community and educational centre, promoting green solutions like permaculture, solar power and so on. At one of our meetings there, in the big hall, one of the patients came and sat at the back to listen - and she donated 50p to our cause!
We didn't get the hospital, of course - a company bought it and the best use they managed to make of it was to use it as dormitories for 250 Spanish workers who got bussed out to factories in South Wales.
It was then sold again - and last year I applied for a job up there.
I arrived at the old entrance hall, which I remembered as being rather like the reception area of a Victorian hotel, with lots of wood panelling. Most of the panelling was still there, but there were holes in the walls with wires hanging out, too, and puddles of water in the corridors. The room where I was interviewed was newly decorated and well maintained, but it was surrounded by dereliction. The man who interviewed me was new to his job, and seemed full of energy and eager to get the place on it's feet and providing workshop and office space for businesses.
From the story in the paper, he doesn't seem to have succeeded. The number of businesses renting space there has dropped from around 30 to 6.