The West Riding Lunatic & Mental Asylum (one flew over the cuckoo's nest)

[Bramley4woods]

Rich87 wrote: Personally i think that an old hospital like this shouldnt be touched for renovation of flats. Im a joiner and i work around leeds, and iv seen many old houses, morgues (dunno if thats spelt right lol) been converted into 'modern apartments'. What i think is wrong about it is that they start knocking down walls and covering up old features with cheap, [edited for content] modern features. I think this just totally takes away all the historic features of the place. Old buildings like royds should be preserved as it was, and made into a museum, where people can appreciate the origins of the building. Instead this building will be some cheaply converted flats, that people who show no interest of history, will move into. Such a shame the history will vanish, so the developer can earn a few quid Well we had a family member in High Royds for a few weeks in 1999 on account of senile dementia. It was clear that the building hadn't been maintained properly since before WW2.For our relative it was a warm secure place where he got the best treatment that could be had. TBH I don't know how a similar patient would be treated nowadays, better or worse.That aside, cities all over the country had these enormous Victorian mental, institutions created when mental illness wasn't understood at all. They had accomodation which supposedly distinguished between lunatics, idiots, and cretins etc. with no real treatment for any of them.Unfortunately our relative had senile dementia, which is a failure of the brain at the end of one's life. No cure is to be expected. Even we understood that.We were at least grateful he got his treatment such as was available, his physical needs were met and he was kept safe from harm. I am absolutely sure this must be being achieved today in a more modern building, maybe somewhere more convenient for the relatives. After all High Royds was a fair old drag from Morley for us wasn't it , seven days per week, don't you reckon ?

[Phill_d]

Hi Bramley. There are over 250 closed asylums in the U.K. most of them closing at the same time. I believe the government called this cost cutting measure 'care in the community' I agree with you the old asylums weren't the happiest places for people. I'm not really sure were all the patients have gone now though.    

[wiggy]

i watched mr dimblebys programme 'how we built britain',the look around the hospital was quite an eye opener.

[The Parksider]

Phill_d wrote: Hi Bramley. There are over 250 closed asylums in the U.K. most of them closing at the same time. I believe the government called this cost cutting measure 'care in the community' I agree with you the old asylums weren't the happiest places for people. I'm not really sure were all the patients have gone now though.     THANK YOU for sharing your efforts Phil.I remember High Royds when my Auntie had mental problems. She "escaped" and was not found for two weeks before she turned up at Thwaite Mills. She had had enough and went to we think to Kirkstall Abbey and gone in the river there.I had to take my mum to visit her sister as my dad would not go near the place. Turned out he married his first wife in 1945 and she died there in 1946.We found a death certificate only a couple of weeks back and it confirmed her death there and what I knew anyway - that she had no mental health problems as such but suffered a brain tumour, so at one time the place was probably a "head hospital" mental or physical.After meanwood Hospital closed patients were distributed to various small homes around Leeds. I did a few health and safety sessions for the companies/trusts/charities involved.Some of the homes and houses that house these people now are seriously very nice places. More friendly. They are staffed by wardens/nurses whatever you want to call them, but they are more like homes than the old institutions so I can't knock "care in the community" from what I've seen.

[Si]

Phill_d wrote: Yes we had a look at the little chapel over the road were 2,858 patients from High Royds are buried.. Theres only 4 graves in the whole place.. The rest are all unmarked. Thats pretty sad.. I'll put a few pics on here later. I'm just putting a few spook shots on mi flickr now There was a chap in the local paper this week campaigning to restore the graveyard. Don't know if anyone saw it?

[chameleon]

This may be of interesthttp://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/Mem ... 5191010.jp

[Richard A Thackeray]

Phill_d wrote: The West Riding Pauper & Lunatic Asylum is better known today as High Royds hospital. Built in 1888 it was the third such asylum to be built in England and was finally closed in 2003. The place is undergoing extensive renovation into posh flats & housing with much of the former hospital now coverted, It's the same story with Stanley Royd (the West Riding Lunatic Asylum.That's been converted into apartments/flats, & I had a good scout round before it was actually 'gutted'Down in the basement of the main building, the cells were still in situ; they had the holes in the walls where the shackles had been removed & a central drainage channel from when the cells were hosed out http://stanleyroydhospital.fotopic.net/ ... yRoyd.phpI had a valid reason for being there, I work for the Trust that was responsible for the buildings.

[Catweazle]

After over a hundred years I think I could have been one of the last (the last?)person ever employed there I worked there for about 2 months in the Spring of 2003 when there were 4 wards left - by my last week the last week it was open there were just two wards and the office by the front door. I left on the Friday the final patients ('elderly psychiatric' left that weekend).Incidentally the souvenir history of High Royds book that came out a couple of years after it closed has got the closing date wrong it says something like Feb 2003 when I know for a fact I didnt even start until at least March 2003.AFAIK High Royds could have been the last Victorian Asylum still open in England with "Care in the Community" becoming official policy in the mid-late 80s the vast majority shut from about 1989 onwards with most of them going in the first half of the 90s. I don't know of any others that were still extant in 2003.I took some good atmospheric photos there in my last week working there - long empty corridors etc - the long walk from the ward I worked on right at the end of the right wing all the way to the only other inhabited part of the building by the front door was some experience.People knock the old asylums but when they started building them in the early-mid 19th century they were a vast humanitairian improvement on what had gone before.    

[Catweazle]

Phill_d wrote: The West Riding Pauper & Lunatic Asylum is better known today as High Royds hospital. Built in 1888 it was the third such asylum to be built in England and was finally closed in 2003. I don't quite understand what this means unless it relates to some slight administration detail that made these 3 asylums different as 1888 was quite late for such an asylum to be built. The original laws stipulating that each English county was required to build asylums were drafted in the mid-late 1810s with most being built in the first half of the 19th century 1820s-1850s being the most common period.As far as the population of the English asylum system was concerned this reached its peak in 1954 after which the first anti-psychotic drugs were gradually introduced and from that date onwards the total national population of inpatients gradually decreased so that by the advent of 'Care in the Community' as a policy from the mid 1980s they were relatively empty compared with their peak.*'Care in the Community' of course being a disingenuous and very convenient attempt by the then Tory government to hide their obsessional costcutting behind a veneer of the latest mental health ideas...

[amber]

Met the wife at Stanley Royd Wakefield in 1956. Don't ask who was visiting who. I was playing football against the staff and my wife to be had gone along with her brother who was a team mate. They used to let the poor inmates out to watch the game and it created a strange atmosphere, the home team never lost.The interior was very much like the pictures of High Royd. Gave us the creeps. Just realized its our Golden wedding this year,must give her a treat and get a takeaway from the chippie