THE BLOGGER WHO broke into an abandoned Northern Irish cancer hospital and posted abandoned records of its patients online had previously broken into the Big Brother house, it has emerged.

Brighton blogger Lucy Sparrow, who goes by the online pseudonym ‘Rookinella’, claims to be “addicted” to abandoned or derelict buildings – and is one of a group of bloggers who posted dozens of photographs of records abandoned at the old Belvoir Park cancer hospital in Belfast.

Sparrow told today’s Irish News that she did not believe taking photographs of the records and putting them online was immoral, but believed she was doing a public service and helping to “highlight the issue” of the records’ apparent abandonment.

It has emerged, however, that Sparrow has a previous claim to fame – having made headlines in 2007 when she successfully broke into the house at Elstree TV Studios where the Big Brother series is filmed.

At the time, she posted photographs on urban exploration forum 28dayslater.co.uk – writing that it was “so surreal” to be inside the studio, which was being refitted between series at the time.

The Irish News, first reporting the story on Monday, had claimed the photographs of the abandoned records at Belvoir Park had been made available for sale online, though this report referred to a feature on the Fotopic.net website where users could buy prints of the images its users uploaded.

Sparrow said she had disabled this feature on her account some years ago, having found little use for it.

Sparrow’s photographs of the records at the Belvoir Park hospital have since become inaccessible, since the Fotopic.net website on which they were stored disappeared last month after its owner went into administration.

The Belfast Trust has pledged to have the derelict cancer files – of which there are about 20,000 – moved by the end of the week.