Portal:Featured Article Of The Week
Featured Article Of The Week
Friern Hospital
Built to ease pressure on the first Middlesex County Asylum at Hanwell, which was severely overcrowded, the second pauper asylum for Middlesex opened in 1851 at Colney Hatch. It had 1250 beds and was the largest and most modern asylum in Europe. The intention was that the Hanwell Asylum would take patients from west London and the Colney Hatch Asylum those from east London. (However, this proved administratively impossible as no-one had devised a scheme as to how east London patients already in Hanwell could be transferred to Colney Hatch. Hanwell remained overcrowded.)
The 119 acre site had been chosen because the Great Northern Railway was being constructed to pass alongside it (similarly, the Hanwell Asylum had been built beside the Grand Junction Canal, so that bulk supplies such as coal could easily be brought in). The foundation stone was laid by the Prince Consort in 1849 and the building was completed in the record time of 19 months on November 1850. Even while it was under construction, it had been enlarged to accommodate 1250 patients instead of the originally planned 1000. Furnishing and staffing of the Asylum took a further six months.
The original cost of the Italianate-style building, with its ventilation towers and central cupola, had been established at £150,000, but the true cost proved to be double that - £300,000. At £240 per bed it was the most expensive asylum ever built. It was also the longest - 1884 feet (about 600 metres) - as the Commissioners in Lunacy wished that it be no more than two storeys high (although the sloping nature of the site meant that the wings were three storeys high). Within the buildings were six miles of corridors. The estate had its own water supply and it own farm of 75 acres, on which many of the patients were employed. It also had its own cemetery (which was in use until 1873) and a chapel. Click here for more...
