WELSH HOTEL ONCE HOME TO WWI SOLDIERS NOW LIES ABANDONED

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, Wales was built as a convalescent hotel in the early 1860s. It was subsequently used as an auxiliary military hospital from 1915. Between World War I and II, 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 in 1946, before it closed in 2013. Photographer Shaun Ashford, 25, of Cardiff, Wales, visited the historic site and captured the Victorian building’s empty interiors.

Other great stories
SOMERSET FLOODING

Villages on the Somerset Levels have faced weeks of flooding with no respite from the conditions in sight .

I BLAME MYSELF FOR MY DAUGHTER’S ANOREXIA

WENDY Randall, 16, from Kent is now training to be a bodybuilder after recovering from anorexia .

MICROBES OR FLAMINGOS

FLAMINGOS from above look like the pink algae they eat .

TUNNEL FOR VICTORY

What lies beneath this building site? Britain's great hope of winning the pre-WW2 arms race against Nazi Germany .

TRAPPED IN THE BODY OF A 10 YR OLD: TEENAGE GIRL BORN WITHOUT HORMONES

She is about to start driving and soon will be able to legally buy alcohol and get married, but Poppy Webb-Jones still looks and thinks like a ten-year-old girl .

OH DEER: MOMENT DEER CRASHES THROUGH WINDSCREEN OF BUS

With no luck at the front of the bus, the deer runs around the center seats trying to escape through the window – THIS is the astonishing moment a DEER crashed through the front windshield of a bus before it went hysterically running around the vehicle .

MUM SPEAKS OUT AFTER EX TORTURED HER IN THREE HOUR ATTACK

A mum-of-two, who was scarred for life in a brutal attack at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, is now urging others to leave their abusive partners .

PUTIN'S TINY ARMY 

Some parents would gasp at the thought of their children playing with a toy gun, but these Russian children are actually encouraged to take up real arms .

EYE-CATCHING TRIBAL HAIRSTYLES

BRAIDED, sculpted and beaded, these are the eye-catching hairstyles worn by the tribal women of Angola .

HUNGRY GORILLA ENJOYS DINNER

SHOVELLING food into his mouth, this hungry gorilla enjoys a peaceful moment at dinner time .

BABY WHALE AND MOTHER LAP UP TOURIST ATTENTION

A grey whale and her calf greet an audience of awestruck admirers on the Pacific coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico .