At Beyond the Point we love a challenge and we’re embarking on what might be our most ambitious yet. We’ve set ourselves the task of documenting every remaining ‘lunatic’ asylum building that remains in the UK. County asylums were psychiatric hospitals built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, emerging from revolutionary Victorian laws making special provisions for the mentally-ill; these hospitals were self-sufficient institutions like small towns and often produced their own food and electricity with staff often living on-site.
Since we were given exclusive permission to visit the former Severalls Hospital site back in 2015 we have visited over twenty former asylums across England, Scotland and Wales. Around 137 were constructed across the UK with Bethlem Royal being the first, both in the UK and the world, back in 1247, and Runwell Hospital being one of the last in 1937.
Since many of these institutions started to close from the 1980’s some have been demolished, some abandoned, a few of them converted and just a handful are still in use today. It’s due to the decline of the survival of these buildings that we decided to set about documenting every remaining asylum as part of an ongoing project.
Above left to right, Murray Royal (Scotland), Gartloch (Scotland), Whitchurch (Wales), St Martins (England).
Whilst the treatment provided in these institutions is rather controversial, the grandeur and scale of these hospitals is like nothing that has been seen since. Over the next two years we plan to continue documenting these historic buildings across both the UK and in Ireland where we’ll photograph the buildings for our website and film the best of them for our YouTube Channel, which last year surpassed 6,000 subscribers and close to 900,000 views. We are currently working on three asylum videos; a feature-length film on Severalls Hospital with previously unseen footage, a round-up of Wales’ remaining asylums and a more general short film explaining what exactly asylums were. We also plan to visit northern England and Ireland to document more buildings this year.
Some of these buildings are easier than others to photograph so we’ll be contacting various people, including the NHS, to ask for permission to go inside some hospitals so that we can properly document them and do justice to both the past and future of these psychiatric hospitals.
Above left to right, Runwell (England), Talgarth (Wales), Denbigh (Wales), Stratheden (Scotland).
