Difference between revisions of "Portal:Featured Article Of The Week"

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|Title= Porirua Psychiatric Hospital
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|Title= Claybury Hospital
|Image= asylum-1910-2.jpg
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|Body= Porirua Psychiatric Hospital was opened in 1887 on 140 acres of rural farmland outside of Wellington, New Zealand. The hospital was constructed as a farm colony for the nearby Mount View Asylum. Fresh air and open land was considered beneficial for patients, and the colony had extensive vegetable gardens, an orchard, and a 6000 gallon water reservoir that were built before the first buildings of the hospital had opened.
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|Body= In the 1880s the Justices of the County of Middlesex planned to build a fourth County Asylum to relieve overcrowding in the Hanwell, Friern Barnet and Banstead Asylums. The Claybury Hall estate at Woodford Bridge, Essex, was purchased in January 1887 as the site for the new asylum at a cost of £36,000. Other lands bordering the estate were also bought, and the total cost of the 269-acre site was £39,415.
  
The first building, the H-Cottage Ward, was finished on March 11th of 1887. This building would later become a doctors residence, and then as a convalescent ward for women. On May 31st, 1887 Dr Thomas Radford King was appointed medical superintendent of both Wellington and Porirua Asylums.
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Claybury Hall was situated on the top of Tomswood Hill and its grounds included about 50 acres of ancient woodland and 95 acres of open parkland, ponds, pasture and historic gardens which had been designed in 1789 by the landscape architect Sir Humphrey Repton.
  
In 1891, a new central block was built to accommodate 500 new chronic patients. Construction was completed one year later, and the new wards included dormitories for both male and female patients. By 1900, the construction of the original design of the asylum to accommodate 513 patients was almost completed with dormitories, day rooms, and single rooms for the noisy patients provided on both the male and female sides. According to Proirua Hospital Museum and Resource Centre Trust, "there was criticism of the materials used for the building such as the use of unseasoned timber which was shrinking, plaster breaking down, and the use of sea sand in the mortar making it friable." In 1908, the hospital's nursing staff was composed of 30 nurses and 32 attendants.  [[Porirua Psychiatric Hospital|Click here for more...]]
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An architectural design competition was held, and won by George Thomas Hine, the acknowledged leading asylum architect in the country. His plan - a pioneering 'compact arrow design' - laid out the asylum in a smaller and more logical layout than previously used.
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In March 1888 a granite-railed tramway was laid from the gate lodges (under construction) to the main site so that building work could begin in June. Two-thirds of the main buildings were to be erected on the summit of the hill but, first, some 100,000 cubic yards had to be sliced off to create a level platform of 12 acres. This took six months to do and, unfortunately, it then proved difficult to find firm foundations in the spongy subsoil. Building work then stopped altogether in December 1888 when the main contractor became bankrupt.  [[Claybury Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
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Revision as of 02:59, 28 October 2018

Featured Article Of The Week

Claybury Hospital


claybury5.png

In the 1880s the Justices of the County of Middlesex planned to build a fourth County Asylum to relieve overcrowding in the Hanwell, Friern Barnet and Banstead Asylums. The Claybury Hall estate at Woodford Bridge, Essex, was purchased in January 1887 as the site for the new asylum at a cost of £36,000. Other lands bordering the estate were also bought, and the total cost of the 269-acre site was £39,415.

Claybury Hall was situated on the top of Tomswood Hill and its grounds included about 50 acres of ancient woodland and 95 acres of open parkland, ponds, pasture and historic gardens which had been designed in 1789 by the landscape architect Sir Humphrey Repton.

An architectural design competition was held, and won by George Thomas Hine, the acknowledged leading asylum architect in the country. His plan - a pioneering 'compact arrow design' - laid out the asylum in a smaller and more logical layout than previously used.

In March 1888 a granite-railed tramway was laid from the gate lodges (under construction) to the main site so that building work could begin in June. Two-thirds of the main buildings were to be erected on the summit of the hill but, first, some 100,000 cubic yards had to be sliced off to create a level platform of 12 acres. This took six months to do and, unfortunately, it then proved difficult to find firm foundations in the spongy subsoil. Building work then stopped altogether in December 1888 when the main contractor became bankrupt. Click here for more...