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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
National
Shawaz Ahmad

Inside abandoned dental practice where teeth moulds and dusty dentures remain 30 years on

An abandoned dental practice that has been left untouched since the 1980s has been discovered in the heart of London.

Ben James, 32, captured photos and videos showing his way around the basement containing boxes full of dentures, scattered broken dentures, rolls of bandages and empty seats.

Ben said: "It felt, literally, like stepping into a museum that had been hidden away from the public view for more than 20 years."

When Ben asked the neighbours about the dusty old property in Primrose Hill, he discovered that the home had been empty for decades. The owners of the house had died in the 1980s.

The exterior of the abandoned house in London, UK (mediadrumimages/BenJames)
Dusty files in the abandoned home (mediadrumimages/BenJames)

He said: "Seeing all the old dentistry records, paperwork and tooth moulds with peoples' names on, I wondered where these people were and if they were still alive.”

The urban explorer also found out that neighbours had a key to the home.

When he entered the empty house, he saw the rooms had been completely gutted with no sign of life.

Then he went from the rooms to the basement, where he came across the dental practice.

Half-empty bottles of solutions and medicines, rusty and mouldy (mediadrumimages/BenJames)

“The instruments and things all showed signs of a really old dental practice", he said.

“The paperwork that I found in the dental practice dated between 1979-1986.

“Everything from the patient chair to the dusty dentures had an air of abandonment. It was very clear that the practice had been left in a hurry, untouched.”

Ben shares his discoveries on his Instagram account, where he has over 37,800 followers.

He also runs a TikTok account with over 1 million followers .

Boxes of records and other things that are essential to a dental practice (mediadrumimages/BenJames)
An open, spilt box inside the practice (mediadrumimages/BenJames)

The explorer has travelled to many countries, visiting abandoned places in the USA, Spain and Germany. A recurring theme in his visits are abandoned funeral homes and coffins.

His most recent TikTok, with 1.6 million views, shows an abandoned transparent hospital.

Inside the hospital Ben found abandoned patient bedrooms, operating theatres, eye clinics, pathology labs, blood samples, x-ray sheets and dried human lungs.

Packaging and bottles that Ben James discovered in the abandoned home (mediadrumimages/BenJames)

One comment on the video said: “wow this is amazing but incredibly scary in the sense that they just left patience records there for anyone to find a read.”

Another wrote: “Now this is the type of travelling I want to do!”.

Others questioned why so much of the equipment and documents were left behind for anyone to see.

Another questioned: “How can they neglect like that? The records, the blood samples, dried lungs..”

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