These are the haunting images from inside an abandoned 56-bedroom hotel once home to injured soldiers during WW1
Named The Rest, the Grade II-listed building in Porthcawl, Wales, was built as a convalescent hotel in the early 1860s
A GRAND 56-bedroom hotel once heaving with injured soldiers during the First World War now lies completely abandoned.
Named The Rest, the Grade II-listed building in Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan, was built as a convalescent hotel in the early 1860s.
It was subsequently used as an auxiliary military hospital from 1915.
Between World Wars One and Two, the hospital provided care for more than 2,500 wounded soldiers from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
The Rest, which sits on a clifftop overlooking Rest Bay, returned to civilian use as a convalescent hotel - where people would go to recover from illness - in 1946, before it closed in 2013.
Photographer Shaun Ashford, 25, visited the historic site and captured the Victorian building's empty interiors.
Shaun, of Cardiff, Wales, says: "These photographs show what happens once the doors are closed and the building has been forgotten about.
"I always feel very privileged to be able to photograph derelict buildings.
"I love the fact that I am able to walk around a place that was once busy and noisy when it's now empty, silent and very deserted."
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Since closing three years ago, the only occupants left inside The Rest are dusty documents, such as booking forms, medical notes and staff time sheets.
The first patients admitted to The Rest, which was built with the backing of Florence Nightingale, included survivors of the Tynewydd Colliery disaster in 1877, after the miners had spent ten days trapped underground.
Shaun spent three hours exploring the three-storey building and photographed a number of its now worn features, including intricate railings on staircases and inscriptions found throughout the property.
He says: "It was lovely to see even a few things still intact.
"To be able to document buildings that hold our history within their walls is something I am very proud to be able to do."
The Rest, which has been on the market since 2013, has a reported price tag of £4million, and the property has full planning consent for 68 apartments.
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