THE LAST patients to be treated at Winwick Hospital will finally leave this weekend.

There were 163 patients left at the site, 125 of them from Warrington and 38 who were under the care of Halton Hospital NHS Trust. The Warrington patients will move just a few hundred metres to the new state-of-the-art Hollins Park facility at the rear of the site, while the others will move back to Halton. Both Trusts have developed their own new facilities for patients who are suffering from acute mental illnesses.

But the hospital is not yet completely deserted. The pharmacy, catering, day units and some office facilities will gradually be moved during the next few weeks.

The hospital's long-stay patients were moved to alternative care in March 1997 and for many years, the majority of buildings at the 101-year-old infirmary have been empty. At its height, it treated more than 2,000 patients and was in the Guinness Book of Records as Europe's largest mental institution.

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