Hi all,
Long time lurker from Colchester but finally got up the courage to do Severalls! Please forgive my photos, I haven't yet learned how to use my camera in a better way than simply 'point and shoot' but it was brilliant to finally get in there. Must have spent around 3 hours or so in there with a couple of non member friends of mine and I reckon we only saw around a quarter of what this vast place has to offer. Will definitely be going back I think when I'm more clued up on my camera!
Some history:
Severalls Hospital in Colchester, Essex, United Kingdom was a psychiatric hospital built in 1910 to the design of architect Frank Whitmore. It opened in May 1913.
The 300-acre (1.2 km2) site housed some 2000 patients and was based on the "Echelon plan" - a specific arrangement of wards, offices and services within easy reach of each other by a network of interconnecting corridors. This meant that staff were able to operate around the site without the need to go outside in bad weather. Unlike modern British hospitals, patients in Severalls were separated according to their gender.
Psychiatrists were free to experiment with new treatments on patients seemingly at will, using practices now considered unsuitable such as electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) and the use of frontal lobotomy. The use of these treatments peaked in the 1950s. In her book Madness in Its Place: Narratives of Severalls Hospital, 1913-1997, Diana Gittins notes that often women were admitted by their own family, sometimes as the result of bearing illegitimate children or because they had been raped.
Photos:
My first glimpse of the corridors. Honestly 10000x better than I could have imagined. Brilliant.
Bed!
Most eager to find this, and we did
Loved this!
Directions were handy...
Thanks for looking
Josh
Long time lurker from Colchester but finally got up the courage to do Severalls! Please forgive my photos, I haven't yet learned how to use my camera in a better way than simply 'point and shoot' but it was brilliant to finally get in there. Must have spent around 3 hours or so in there with a couple of non member friends of mine and I reckon we only saw around a quarter of what this vast place has to offer. Will definitely be going back I think when I'm more clued up on my camera!
Some history:
Severalls Hospital in Colchester, Essex, United Kingdom was a psychiatric hospital built in 1910 to the design of architect Frank Whitmore. It opened in May 1913.
The 300-acre (1.2 km2) site housed some 2000 patients and was based on the "Echelon plan" - a specific arrangement of wards, offices and services within easy reach of each other by a network of interconnecting corridors. This meant that staff were able to operate around the site without the need to go outside in bad weather. Unlike modern British hospitals, patients in Severalls were separated according to their gender.
Psychiatrists were free to experiment with new treatments on patients seemingly at will, using practices now considered unsuitable such as electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) and the use of frontal lobotomy. The use of these treatments peaked in the 1950s. In her book Madness in Its Place: Narratives of Severalls Hospital, 1913-1997, Diana Gittins notes that often women were admitted by their own family, sometimes as the result of bearing illegitimate children or because they had been raped.
Photos:
My first glimpse of the corridors. Honestly 10000x better than I could have imagined. Brilliant.
Bed!
Most eager to find this, and we did
Loved this!
Directions were handy...
Thanks for looking
Josh
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