Talgarth is a small, quaint market town in mid-Wales and as of 2011 was home to less than 2,000 people. Driving through the narrow country roads you’ll eventually get to two large concrete gate posts – the original entrance to the former Mid Wales Hospital, known as Talgarth Asylum. Due to increasing demand on other nearby mental hospitals, a new one was needed and a 261 acre estate called Chancefield was purchased and in 1900 a new asylum was under construction. Three years later it was officially opened as the Brecon and Radnor Joint Counties Lunatic Asylum.

The hospital was designed around the compact arrow layout, where a series of wards are on the outside of the side, all connected by a long ring of corridors, with kitchen and other facilities in the centre of the site. Like other buildings of the time this one was also self sufficient with its own farm land for patients to work on, its own electricity and boiler house.

The asylum was relatively small with a capacity of around 352 when it opened – in comparison Severalls Hospital in Essex had a capacity of 2,000. Six classes of ward were designated for Acute, Chronic, Epileptic and Infirm patients along with an admissions ward and a separate ward for sick patients with six males wards to the west and separate female wards to the east.

The fantastic website County Asylums, details some of the treatments used in the 1920/30’s.

The early treatments introduced in the 1920’s for mental illness included Malaria treatment which was proven to halt the onset of syphilitic paresis although it was also unsuccessfully used to treat other mental conditions. Deep Sleep Therapy used barbiturates to induce a coma to treat schizophrenia and depression. The similar Hypoglycaemic Shock Therapy was introduced in the 1930’s and used Insulin induce a coma and convulsions in schizophrenic patients. The 1930’s also saw the introduction of Psychoanalysis although it would be many years before Psychotherapy and Medical treatments for mental illness would become integrated in the treatment of mental patients.
County Asylums

A second courtyard on the east side served as a drying court for the laundry buildings which surrounded it. Between the two on the hospitals central Axis stood the administration block.

During the Second World War patients were transferred from Cardiff City Mental Hospital which had been requisitioned as a war hospital however in July 1940 Mid Wales Hospital was also requisitioned and patients were temporarily transferred elsewhere until it was returned to normal use in 1947. It was the following year, when the NHS was founded, when the hospital had some of its most radical changes. Patients were allowed to mix for the first time, regardless of their gender, and new treatments were being offered including psychiatry, chiropody and electro-convulsive therapy.

As treatments changed over the coming decades, most psychiatric asylums began to close and the Mid Wales Hospital steadily reduced its services until it closed in 1999, serving the community for 96 years. Controversially, once the site had closed the estate was sold to the former Chief Medical officer for just £227,000 – something which was later investigated. Nothing became of the site, aside from a handful of homes being sold, and it stood derelict for years. The roof tiles of the majority of the site have been stripped and sold off – valued at around £1 million. Unfortunately most of the site is in an awful condition with collapsed floors and burnt roofs so it’s unlikely that most of the site will be salvageable however there’s hope for the admin building and church.