Historic Site: Kenmore Goulburn, New South Wales, Australia
By Throsbyonchurch on 06-Jan-18. Waypoint GA11420

Located on Taralga Road and Wollondilly Avenue, Goulburn is the former Kenmore hospital.

Note: There are questions about your visit to this location to answer in order to log a find.

Kenmore Hospital

Opened in 1895, the once grand Kenmore hospital now lays abandoned on a 75-hecatre block of land. Being one of the first facilities of its kind in Australia, it was considered the jewel of the medical community as it began with a small intake of only a few dozen patients. That quickly expanded, with people being committed for anything ranging from promiscuity to postnatal depression. As the hospital’s patient size grew, so too did it's notoriety.

Kenmore was closed for a period of time during World War Two when it was used as an Army Hospital, and following that re-opened as a psychiatric hospital.

The Kenmore Psychiatric Hospital site is of State significance being the first purpose-built, whole complex for mental health care in rural NSW, and for having been used and maintained by the one agency for the original purpose continuously (except for the brief Defence period during WWII). The original 1890s Vernon complex of buildings (W.L. Vernon, first Government Architect) still evidence the features that made Kenmore one of the most modern psychiatric institutions of its day. The early buildings represent the finest 'corporate' architectural expression of the Edwardian (later Federation) Freestyle in Australia.

A Hospital village (self-supporting up to WW2), there are nineteen ward buildings, administration buildings, kitchen, assorted staff dwellings and a river Pump-house. All of orange-red brick which was kilned on site, and having sandstone features in the walls. Original rooves of Welsh slate. Slate stoops and stairways feature throughout most buildings.

The farm complex of Kenmore is culturally significant as a physically intact precinct created as an integral part of rehabilitation treatment for the patients. The sporting related functions, particularly the cricket pavilion, are significant as exemplars of the close connection of Kenmore to its community, and the use of sport as an integral part of rehabilitation treatment.

Kenmore has also played a pivotal role in the evolution and development of treatment for the mentally ill and handicapped in NSW. 

The institutionalisation of psychiatric patients is a function now less practised. A large psychiatric institution, such as Kenmore, although not unique, demonstrates a way of life and a treatment ethic now no longer practised. The layout and design of the core buildings clearly evidence the institutional beliefs and treatments of psychiatric patients in the late 19th century. Also the Kenmore cemetery is one of the few 'pauper' cemeteries in the state.

Nurses accommodation was a tiny room, furnished with a single bed, a small dressing table and wardrobe, one of many such rooms in an old weatherboard building. This ‘nurses’ home’ was later used as a female ward called ‘Buna House’. 

There were eight separate rooms used for ‘noisy and violent patients’, which soon became nicknamed 'the wet rooms' because the rooms and their occupants were hosed down daily.

Services didn’t wind down until the early 2000s, with the massive collection of buildings now left empty and abandoned.

Note: There are questions about your visit to this location to answer in order to log a find including a photo of yourself or gps at the site.

The boathouse is at the end of Wollondilly Avenue and more can be seen of this hospital from Wollondilly Avenue.  Photos can be taken along any section of the two roads.

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