The asylum had a reputation for cruelty and inhuman treatment of its inmates, many of whom were kept in padded cells in solitary confinement for much longer than was needed. She is an avid adventurer, and can be regularly found hiking up mountainsides with her four-legged friend and children in tow.

Hospitals also had morgues for those who died there, such as the one in Muckamore, Co Antrim, shown here, where there was a viewing gallery for loved ones to identify the deceased, who would have been placed in a coffin there.

Many of these hospitals treated the rare and infectious diseases of their times, particularly tuberculosis (TB). Abandoned Ireland travels the length and breadth of the island of Ireland visiting and documenting our forgotten buildings, highlighting their social importance, and bringing their stories back to life through the medium of photography. Despite its present condition, however, Cairndhu is not actually lost to the world: the roof remains intact; and the house might yet be pressed again into action.

This is a moving and funny debut novel set in a quirky coastal community you will be desperate to visit after reading. The house was being demolished for a new build and I had been asked to document it as it was before this work started. It proved popular very early on, with people commenting and wanting to know more about the buildings. Here, photographer Rebecca Brownlie explains how a fascination for seeking out haunted houses evolved into an ongoing quest to document decaying dwellings and their often fascinating histories.When I first saw Cairndhu I couldn’t believe we had a property like this in Northern Ireland and that I’d never seen or heard of it. Abandoned Ireland by Dominic Connolly, published by Amber Books , shows the extraordinary past of the small island country, exploring everywhere 'from the sparsely inhabited west coast to the urban buzz of Dublin and Belfast '. Bursting with engaging and often surprising details, each haunting photograph is an invitation to immerse yourself in history, and an Ireland long gone. CLIFDEN CASTLE, COUNTY GALWAY: 'Built for landowner John D’Arcy in 1818, this Gothic Revival-style house suffered when the Great Famine struck, and many tenants could not pay their rent or emigrated,' Connolly says, revealing that the D’Arcys later went bankrupt.

Sadly, it closed its doors in the late 1980s due to lack of funding and has lain abandoned ever since. In the seemingly ruined and mundane she finds diamonds in the rough; her images of the ordinary ephemera of past lives – dusty love letters, rusting spectacles, photographs yellowed and curled with age – paint the pictures of real people and full lives. When I got home and started editing, I noticed something in the glass door that I hadn’t noticed at the time. He has also written for the Telegraph, Evening Standard, Metro and Saga Magazine, and is the author of three books. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The faded grandeur lends a sadness to many images, while others — like the sight of sleeping sacks still lining the workhouse floor — are haunting, not because of ghostly fears but because they hint at real-life horrors. We all pass by properties everyday that eventually we overlook but have wondered about, this book tells some of those buildings stories.

I’m just glad I didn’t see this at the time, as the rest of the photo shoot would have been cut short! I’ve gone into houses in the snow and they’ve been as warm as if the fire was on, and you can feel the warmth and the welcome of the people who lived there. When Grace saves his life in a kayaking accident - if it was an accident - and Evan's troubled son arrives to stay, all three are drawn together in a way that forces a reckoning with their personal traumas and draws them back into society. It’s made her passionate about trying to save, or at least document, our abandoned buildings before they’re destroyed or altered. Today, remnants of the country's heritage can be found in every corner of this fascinating land, from the thinly inhabited west coast to the modern, populated areas of Leinster.During lockdown, I was going through some old files, and I posted a cottage that I was lucky to document in Co Tyrone. Finally, in their later years the Dixons gifted the house to the hospital trust, and it then became a convalescence home.