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"I found your photos of Cane Hill really interesting. I worked as a laundry porter there in 1977/78 when I was 22.
I'd just graduated from Croydon Art College and was a loss for what to do, when a friend suggested I went for an interview at
Cane Hill. In those days I was a bit of a hippie and not really interested in earning bread, man!" "A lot of the patients were schizophrenics and a many of them highly intelligent. They were often free to wonder
about and I was friends with a lot of them." "The porters all tended to be young lads like myself and I admit that a lot of clandestine dope smoking went on.
I remember pushing the laundry trolleys along those endless corridors often stoned out of my mind. At times it was hard to tell
who was the most crazy, the patients or the staff!" "In a way it breaks my heart to see what Cane Hill has become. I live in Italy now but still visit my mother who
lives in Old Coulsdon. You can see the water tower when you drop down the hill from various viewpoints in the area. How much
longer will the building remain I wonder?" Chris
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