The abandoned Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island, New York (Picture: Reivax/Wikimedia)
All across the world lie abandoned islands, hidden away or in plain sight, lands frozen in time slowly reclaimed by nature.
Many have a dark and tragic past, often serving as quarantine stations for those with serious and often deadly diseases, the infected ferried away from the rest of society.
Leper colonies, scarlet fever hospitals and TB wards were common on these often picturesque islands, although a beautiful view might have been little comfort for those trapped in what may have become their final resting place.
Today, many of these islands remain out of bounds to visitors, with long-abandoned buildings threatening to crumble.
But that doesn’t make them any less fascinating, nor mean their stories shouldn’t be remembered.
Five abandoned islands across the world
Poveglia, Venice
Poveglia is actually three islands, two natural, one man-made, and is widely regarded as one of the most haunted spots in Venice.
For centuries, the islands were actually very peaceful, and presumably ghost free, as the community who made their homes there avoided both invasions and taxes on the mainland.
However, residents left the islands in the 14th Century during the Chioggia War, a three-year battle between Genoa and Venice.
Poveglia is said to be haunted (Picture: Getty/iStockphoto)
Abandoned for centuries, in 1776 it was repurposed as a customs check, but quickly became an accidental plague quarantine site after several cases were found on board two ships.
This made Poveglia Venice’s third plague quarantine island, serving as an ‘overflow’ for Lazzaretto Nuovo and Lazzaretto Vecchio.
Once the plague died down, Poveglia continued to function as a quarantine station, before being converted into a psychiatric hospital in the 20th Century.
Abandoned buildings on Poveglia island (Picture: Getty/iStockphoto)
A crumbling hospital on Poveglia (Picture: Getty)
Now abandoned, there are plans to sell the island to private owners – presumably potential buyers who haven’t heard the (false) rumour that 50% of the islands’ earth is made of human ash from cremated plague victims.
In truth, around 100,000 people who died on the islands were buried in ‘plague pits’, highlighting the devastating impact of the disease on Venice’s community.
North Brother Island, New York
If you’ve ever visited New York City, you’ll have been much closer to a quarantine island than you realised.
Sandwiched between the Bronx and the city’s notorious prison Rikers Island, North Brother Island was abandoned in 1963.
The public are banned from North Brother Island (Picture: Wikicommons)
From the 1880s until 1943, the island was used to house those with highly contagious diseases, including the famous ‘Typhoid Mary’ Mallon, an Irish-born American cook who was the first person confirmed as an asymptomatic carrier of the disease.
After being released from her first quarantine, Mary continued working as a cook under fake names, spreading the diseases wherever she went. She is believed to have infected between 51 and 122 with typhoid fever, at least three of whom died – although estimates range up to 50.
Mary was sent to North Brother Island in 1915 after being found working in a New York hospital, and spent the rest of her life there, living in her own cottage.
The island is also home to a huge ‘tuberculosis pavilion’, which never actually housed any patients. It was completed as World War Two broke out, and was instead turned into accommodation for veterans.
The arrival of the TB vaccine in 1943 also left the facility without a primary purpose.
The island’s owners tried to repurpose it as a rehabilitation camp for troubled teens, but was unsuccessful, and North Brother was ultimately abandoned in 1963.
Now owned by the city, its red brick buildings are slowly crumbling. Plants have taken over, and the island is now an official bird sanctuary – boosted by the fact that rats and mice are practically non-existent. A rarity in NYC.
Vozrozhdeniya Island back when it was an island
Vozrozhdeniya Island, Kazakhstan/Uzbekistan border
Today, Vozrozhdeniya Island is no longer an island, but a peninsula. The Aral Sea, in which it lies, has dried up so much that Vozrozhdeniya is now connected to the mainland.
It is also not, strictly speaking, a quarantine station, but something to be quarantined from.
For decades, it served as a huge Soviet bioweapons testing facility. Part of a top-secret project known as Aralsk-7, the then island was often shrouded in mists of deadly diseases, including anthrax, smallpox and the plague.
The island itself was so remote it was not even discovered until the 19th Century, but CIA surveillance in the 1960s revealed an enormous operation had evolved well away from the eyes of the mainland. Research buildings, barracks, rifle ranges, animal pens and an open-air testing site were all spotted packed onto the sandy island, surrounded by the wide expanse of sea, an excellent defence against unwanted visitors.
However, reports suggest a number of cases of collateral damage, with those on the lake sailing through mysterious clouds and falling ill – some even dying, as in the case of two fishermen thought to have caught the plague. It later transpired the Soviets were trying to weaponise it.
But even now it has long been abandoned as a testing station, the area is still highly toxic as home of a massive stockpile of anthrax. Although a months-long project attempted to neutralise the deadly spores, the entire island remains contaminated.
Lighthouse keepers are the only residents on Klein Curaçao (Picture: Getty)
Klein Curaçao, the Caribbean
What appears to be an island paradise has the darkest history of those on this list.
Tiny Klein Curaçao, just a mile squared and located off the coast of Venezuela, it once served as a quarantine station for those captured in the slave trade as they were trafficked from Africa to the Caribbean.
The journey was long, the conditions utterly inhumane, and sickness was common. Of the 3.4 million Africans transported by British ships alone, it is thought 450,000 did not survive the crossing.
Some of those who were sick on arrival found themselves quarantined on Klein Curaçao. Many still died.
The remains of the first quarantine building can still be seen on the northwest of the island, as well as a number of graves.
Shipwrecks dot the shore (Picture: Getty/500px)
The island is also home to many shipwrecks, the rusting hulks of stranded boats dotted along its southern coastline.
Today the island’s only occupants are the lighthouse keepers.
Flat Holm, Bristol Channel
Closer to home, Flat Holm Island off the coast of Wales has been inhabited since at least the Bronze Age.
A few millennia later, this rocky outcrop in the Bristol Channel became home to a quarantine hospital – which started life as a row of tents.
Founded in 1883, its aim was to prevent deadly infectious diseases such as cholera from reaching the mainland. Its first patients were reportedly three sailors thought to have the disease, one of whom died.
Flat Holm lies in the Bristol Channel (Picture: Getty/Hulton Archive)
Over the years it grew into an extensive sanatorium with its own crematorium – made of wood.
However, in 1935 the Ministry of Health condemned the building, which was later converted for wartime service between 1940 and 1944 – the island serving as a vital anti-aircraft installation.
The island also played a significant role in the history of communications, as the site where Guglielmo Marconi sent his first communication over sea.
Unlike many other former quarantine islands, Flat Holm, now also a designated site of special scientific interest and local nature reserve, is open to visitors, and even boasts a pub.