Sunnyside Royal Hospital - Montrose
History (probably Wikipedia, but many web sites have used the same).
Sunnyside Royal Hospital was a psychiatric hospital located in Hillside, north of Montrose, Scotland. The hospital was founded in 1781 by Susan Carnegie as the Montrose Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary & Dispensary and obtained a Royal Charter in 1810. The original building was situated on the Montrose Links on a site bounded by Barrack Road, Ferry Road and Garrison Road.
In 1834, the Governors of the asylum, carrying out the wishes of Mrs Carnegie (who had strongly advocated the appointment of a medical specialist in insanity) appointed the phrenologist William A.F. Browne as medical superintendent. Browne was to prove an inspired choice and an energetic and resourceful leader. He regarded public education as part of his duties, and gave a series of lectures which became enormously popular and influential. In 1837, five lectures were published together under the title What Asylums Were, Are and Ought To Be; this book came to the attention of the Dumfries philanthropist Elizabeth Crichton. She travelled to Montrose, interviewed Browne and offered him the equivalent post at the Crichton Royal in Dumfries. Crichton offered Browne a raise from £150 to £350 per annum. Browne was succeeded at Montrose by Richard Poole, an early psychiatric historian, and, later, by Dr James Howden, who identified cases of pellagra in the asylum.
In 1858, a new improved asylum was completed to the north of Montrose in the village of Hillside on lands of the farm of Sunnyside and the old site was vacated. This site was further developed with the construction of a new facility for private patients called Carnegie House in 1899. Despite this addition, overcrowding was a problem, as the asylum’s patient numbers had grown to 670 by 1900. This situation required additional building work to be undertaken. Consequently, two new buildings – Howden Villa (1901) and Northesk Villa (1904)- were added to the facility. Additional staff were required to care for the additional patients and the Westmount Cottages were built in 1905 to house them. In 1911 the lease of Sunnyside Farm finally expired and over 52 acres were purchased for the sum of £4500. A further development was the addition of Angus House, which was built in 1939 to accommodate elderly patients suffering from dementia.
In 1948, the National Health Service 1946 (Scotland) Act brought the hospital under control of the Eastern Regional Hospital Board. Its name was changed from the Royal Asylum of Montrose to the Royal Mental Hospital of Montrose. In 1962 it became Sunnyside Royal Hospital and came under the jurisdiction of new management. During the 1950s and 1960s, the introduction of new drugs lessened the need for prolonged admission of patients. In addition, the Mental Health (Scotland) Act of 1960 also significantly altered legislation in respect of mental illness and reduced the grounds on which someone could be detained in a mental hospital.
The site was officially closed in late 2011 and most patients were sent to a new £20 million build at Stracathro Hospital, (also in Angus)- the Susan Carnegie Centre. Others were placed in the community. Sunnyside was open for 230 years before its closure, and was the oldest psychiatric hospital in Scotland.
My Visit (plus some additional history)
I quite often make the 6 hour drive up to Aberdeen and try to find somewhere interesting to call into on the way up to break the journey, especially now there's more daylight again. Sunnyside Royal Hospital had been on the list for a few years. After a couple of fails further South I called in here, if nothing else just to weigh it up for a future visit. It was getting late in the day and the thought of a nice meal and my last onshore safety brew for a couple of weeks meant it was going to be a short visit. I quite like a blast around hospitals as they do get a bit samey and you can get bogged down taking too many photos of the same thing from hundreds of different angles.
At least the building was well sign posted so you couldn't miss anything.
Once inside I soon bumped into a couple of explorers, think it was their second visit to the hospital and were happy enough to let me know what was worth seeing.
"Ten years after its founding (in 1781) it was recorded there were 37 lunatics domiciled in the asylum, of which 12 belonged to the town an parish of Montrose. Some patients received free treatment, while offers were fee paying. (A report in December 1836 noted 67 patients, 10 of them free, while the others paid sums between £10 and £40 per year. This compares with 53 patients in 1818.)"
Shortly after I took this this photo I heard some voices from what seemed to be the next room, so went to have a look. It turned out to be a group of teenage girls on the outside of the building. Due to the opaque perspex windows they couldn't see me inside. After listening to them talk about ghosts and the building being haunted they started to push on the perspex windows trying to find a way in. They didn't expect what happened next as I slammed both hands and my face on the window while letting out my best blood curdling scream. The result was what I expected, 5 or 6 very high pitched screams from the other side of the window and the sound of fast moving feet. It took a bit for me to manage to compose myself and my sides ached from laughter for the rest of the visit.
The first interesting item was a therapy bath, not sure why this was left behind. Looked as if it would still work if you plugged it in.
The wards were nice and colorful and in the main not overly trashed.
You have to enjoy the corridors and side rooms, so typical of an asylum. A quick Google found a bit of history of one of the famous patients who spent some time here.
"Sunnyside’s most famous inmate was the father of author Arthur Conan Doyle. Born and raised in England, though from an Irish family, Charles Altamont Doyle (1832-1893), was an artist who moved to Edinburgh in 1849. Struggling with depression and alcoholism he was dismissed from his employment at the Office of Works, with a pension, in June 1876. The extent to which drink got a grip of him is described in a letter by his wife Mary: ‘He would strip himself of all his underclothes, take the very bed linen, climb down the water spout at risk of his life, break open the children’s money boxes. He even drank furniture varnish.’ Five years later he was sent to the nursing home of Blairerno House at Drumlithie in the Mearns, and shortly afterwards he developed epilepsy. Following a violent attempt to escape he was sent to Sunnyside on 26 May 1885, where he remained for some years. At that time, Doyle was one of 500 patients at Sunnyside.
His mental state on arrival was perilous, with Doyle telling staff that he was receiving messages from the unseen world. He then accused staff of being devils and refused to speak to them. But by the summer he was more calm, though he later had recurring delusions that he was going to die. Doyle, the doctors noted, was always drawing and sketching while at Sunnyside, though his talents almost entirely drained away towards the latter part of his incarceration there. A record art, completed between March and July 1889, while he was a patient at Montrose Royal Asylum, was eventually published in 1978 as The Doyle Diary. Doyle’s work combines fantastical images of animals and imaginary creatures. ‘The Spirits of the Prisoners,’ a picture now in Australia, shows those creatures swooping and circling around the asylum. The image, whether intended as symbolic or real, brings to mind Arthur Conan Doyle’s later fascination with the spirit world, and perhaps unfairly those infamous Cottingley Fairies he believed in (which were actually a photographic hoax by two schoolgirls)."
The main hall was probably my favorite room in the hospital, a light open room with a stunning roof.
That good it was worth a short safety break and enjoy the place.
One more photo of the main hall, it was worth it.
"The Asylum at Montrose was clean and well-aired; and the Patients well attended to by the Superintendent and Matron, and those acting under them. The male patients were 37 in number, and the females 38. Six or right of the males work constantly in the garden. A clergyman preaches weekly on Thursday, and says prayers on Monday, to a select number of the Patients, who listen attentively. On Friday a fiddler attends, and the Patients are allowed to dance – the males together and the females together. This is said to delight them very much, but has no permanent effect on them either to the better or the worse. The general state of health was good; and the Registers were accurately kept. [Memoranda Regarding the Royal Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary and Dispensary of Montrose, Richard Poole (Montrose, 1841)"
On wards and upwards and you wander through what was probably a recreation room, an old pool table still in the corner.
Next door is a lone piano, still kicks out a note or 2.
Nearby is a Singer sewing machine.
Continuing up, you start to get a scale of the main hospital buildings, long corridors and small octagonal towers. The boiler house in the background, but ran out of time to see if it was possible.
Apart from the main hall, these corridors with the peeling paint were great to see.
There's little left in the building, but good to see a lot of the features like the fireplaces were still in place.
"From the initial site on Montrose Links, the hospital moved to Sunnyside farm in 1858 following a nationwide review three years earlier by the Scottish Lunacy Commission. There was a growing site for patients on the new site, leading to the provision of a new facility for private patients named Carnegie House, which opened in 1899. Howden Villa and Northesk Villa opening in 1901 and 1904 to house non-paying patients. Angus House, an annex for dementia patients, was built 40 years later. Around this time, in 1940, patient numbers reached the maximum recorded, 1052. But pressure on the hospital’s resources had levelled off, in terms of inpatient need, throughout the 1950s and 1960s because of new drugs and improved treatments. In 1962 the institution was renamed Sunnyside Royal Hospital and came under the jurisdiction of new management. Sunnyside Royal Hospital celebrated its bicentenary in 1981, at which time the number of patients was nearly 400."
The link corridors on the ground floor were very photogenic, just took a couple of photos on the way out and had another look at this floor as I had a better understanding of the layout of the building by now.
This is inside one of the small octagonal towers, an interesting room, but thought it was a shame to have split it in half.
I must have walked straight past the kitchens and dinning area on the way in, too busy scarring teenage girls outside. All that really remains are the extractor fans in the well lit room.
But also a nice looking industrial mixer which was great to see hadn't been trashed.
Well that was my flying visit to Sunnyside Royal Hospital (Just over an hour onsite), like so many places recently I wish I'd visited sooner, but will no doubt be pass again in the near future, there's the out buildings which need a visit.
An hour later I was sat with a nice meal and a safety brew, still chuckling at the reaction I got when I banged on the opaque window, and wondering if they had stopped running and screaming yet.
Second Visit - May 2018
Roll on 4 weeks and I just happened to be passing again, the main reason to stop again was Carnegie House.
Not sure if it was open when I last visited, but had been shut up tight the following week when @Baggy trousers visited. As it turned out luck was on my side. Even better I bumped into a local guy from Norway who was a wealth of knowledge on the history of the place and was glad to come in for a mooch with me.
The carpets here were lush and deep, obvious that money had been invested in this building. Inside there wasn't as much of interest as I'd hoped, the attic was full of pipe work and small offices, the rest of the building just large open rooms. However there was a nice timbered room on the ground floor.
As well as the room I had made a revisit for.
This was by all account the snooker room, the roof in here is stunning. There are 12 panels, each one has a sign of the zodiac on.
That was worth the revisit for me. While I was at Sunnyside it would have been rude not to see what else was accessible. Turned out most of it was apart from the church and the engineering workshops. The 2 newer buildings were a bit of a let down and structurally in a far worse state than the older buildings. A couple of twee Urbex shots from these buildings.
You have to have a chair photo.
Plus the remains of a bed decaying next to an open window.
A quick trip into the main block to try and get a photo from the balcony in the hall didn't work out as the door to the balcony was locked. Pretty depressing to see quite a few things having been trashed in the 4 weeks since my last visit. The sewing machine was now in a hundred bits over the floor!
At the other end of the site was the hospital, enjoyed popping in here. Structurally it's seen better days and looking at the floor has seen the odd person dropping through in many of the corridors. Upstairs it was even worse so only had a brief look up there, don't think I missed much though.
It was the wards off the main corridor on the ground floor which I liked.
The curtain rails and bed side lights still in place.
Again it got to that time to head up the road again for a nice meal and a safety brew.
That's Sunnyside Royal Hospital more or less covered in 2 flying visits, I must have seen 80% of the site. A good chance I'll be back before re-development work starts at the end of the year, but will probably find somewhere else to break my journey up next time.
Cheers, TLR.
History (probably Wikipedia, but many web sites have used the same).
Sunnyside Royal Hospital was a psychiatric hospital located in Hillside, north of Montrose, Scotland. The hospital was founded in 1781 by Susan Carnegie as the Montrose Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary & Dispensary and obtained a Royal Charter in 1810. The original building was situated on the Montrose Links on a site bounded by Barrack Road, Ferry Road and Garrison Road.
In 1834, the Governors of the asylum, carrying out the wishes of Mrs Carnegie (who had strongly advocated the appointment of a medical specialist in insanity) appointed the phrenologist William A.F. Browne as medical superintendent. Browne was to prove an inspired choice and an energetic and resourceful leader. He regarded public education as part of his duties, and gave a series of lectures which became enormously popular and influential. In 1837, five lectures were published together under the title What Asylums Were, Are and Ought To Be; this book came to the attention of the Dumfries philanthropist Elizabeth Crichton. She travelled to Montrose, interviewed Browne and offered him the equivalent post at the Crichton Royal in Dumfries. Crichton offered Browne a raise from £150 to £350 per annum. Browne was succeeded at Montrose by Richard Poole, an early psychiatric historian, and, later, by Dr James Howden, who identified cases of pellagra in the asylum.
In 1858, a new improved asylum was completed to the north of Montrose in the village of Hillside on lands of the farm of Sunnyside and the old site was vacated. This site was further developed with the construction of a new facility for private patients called Carnegie House in 1899. Despite this addition, overcrowding was a problem, as the asylum’s patient numbers had grown to 670 by 1900. This situation required additional building work to be undertaken. Consequently, two new buildings – Howden Villa (1901) and Northesk Villa (1904)- were added to the facility. Additional staff were required to care for the additional patients and the Westmount Cottages were built in 1905 to house them. In 1911 the lease of Sunnyside Farm finally expired and over 52 acres were purchased for the sum of £4500. A further development was the addition of Angus House, which was built in 1939 to accommodate elderly patients suffering from dementia.
In 1948, the National Health Service 1946 (Scotland) Act brought the hospital under control of the Eastern Regional Hospital Board. Its name was changed from the Royal Asylum of Montrose to the Royal Mental Hospital of Montrose. In 1962 it became Sunnyside Royal Hospital and came under the jurisdiction of new management. During the 1950s and 1960s, the introduction of new drugs lessened the need for prolonged admission of patients. In addition, the Mental Health (Scotland) Act of 1960 also significantly altered legislation in respect of mental illness and reduced the grounds on which someone could be detained in a mental hospital.
The site was officially closed in late 2011 and most patients were sent to a new £20 million build at Stracathro Hospital, (also in Angus)- the Susan Carnegie Centre. Others were placed in the community. Sunnyside was open for 230 years before its closure, and was the oldest psychiatric hospital in Scotland.
My Visit (plus some additional history)
I quite often make the 6 hour drive up to Aberdeen and try to find somewhere interesting to call into on the way up to break the journey, especially now there's more daylight again. Sunnyside Royal Hospital had been on the list for a few years. After a couple of fails further South I called in here, if nothing else just to weigh it up for a future visit. It was getting late in the day and the thought of a nice meal and my last onshore safety brew for a couple of weeks meant it was going to be a short visit. I quite like a blast around hospitals as they do get a bit samey and you can get bogged down taking too many photos of the same thing from hundreds of different angles.
At least the building was well sign posted so you couldn't miss anything.
Once inside I soon bumped into a couple of explorers, think it was their second visit to the hospital and were happy enough to let me know what was worth seeing.
"Ten years after its founding (in 1781) it was recorded there were 37 lunatics domiciled in the asylum, of which 12 belonged to the town an parish of Montrose. Some patients received free treatment, while offers were fee paying. (A report in December 1836 noted 67 patients, 10 of them free, while the others paid sums between £10 and £40 per year. This compares with 53 patients in 1818.)"
Shortly after I took this this photo I heard some voices from what seemed to be the next room, so went to have a look. It turned out to be a group of teenage girls on the outside of the building. Due to the opaque perspex windows they couldn't see me inside. After listening to them talk about ghosts and the building being haunted they started to push on the perspex windows trying to find a way in. They didn't expect what happened next as I slammed both hands and my face on the window while letting out my best blood curdling scream. The result was what I expected, 5 or 6 very high pitched screams from the other side of the window and the sound of fast moving feet. It took a bit for me to manage to compose myself and my sides ached from laughter for the rest of the visit.
The first interesting item was a therapy bath, not sure why this was left behind. Looked as if it would still work if you plugged it in.
The wards were nice and colorful and in the main not overly trashed.
You have to enjoy the corridors and side rooms, so typical of an asylum. A quick Google found a bit of history of one of the famous patients who spent some time here.
"Sunnyside’s most famous inmate was the father of author Arthur Conan Doyle. Born and raised in England, though from an Irish family, Charles Altamont Doyle (1832-1893), was an artist who moved to Edinburgh in 1849. Struggling with depression and alcoholism he was dismissed from his employment at the Office of Works, with a pension, in June 1876. The extent to which drink got a grip of him is described in a letter by his wife Mary: ‘He would strip himself of all his underclothes, take the very bed linen, climb down the water spout at risk of his life, break open the children’s money boxes. He even drank furniture varnish.’ Five years later he was sent to the nursing home of Blairerno House at Drumlithie in the Mearns, and shortly afterwards he developed epilepsy. Following a violent attempt to escape he was sent to Sunnyside on 26 May 1885, where he remained for some years. At that time, Doyle was one of 500 patients at Sunnyside.
His mental state on arrival was perilous, with Doyle telling staff that he was receiving messages from the unseen world. He then accused staff of being devils and refused to speak to them. But by the summer he was more calm, though he later had recurring delusions that he was going to die. Doyle, the doctors noted, was always drawing and sketching while at Sunnyside, though his talents almost entirely drained away towards the latter part of his incarceration there. A record art, completed between March and July 1889, while he was a patient at Montrose Royal Asylum, was eventually published in 1978 as The Doyle Diary. Doyle’s work combines fantastical images of animals and imaginary creatures. ‘The Spirits of the Prisoners,’ a picture now in Australia, shows those creatures swooping and circling around the asylum. The image, whether intended as symbolic or real, brings to mind Arthur Conan Doyle’s later fascination with the spirit world, and perhaps unfairly those infamous Cottingley Fairies he believed in (which were actually a photographic hoax by two schoolgirls)."
The main hall was probably my favorite room in the hospital, a light open room with a stunning roof.
That good it was worth a short safety break and enjoy the place.
One more photo of the main hall, it was worth it.
"The Asylum at Montrose was clean and well-aired; and the Patients well attended to by the Superintendent and Matron, and those acting under them. The male patients were 37 in number, and the females 38. Six or right of the males work constantly in the garden. A clergyman preaches weekly on Thursday, and says prayers on Monday, to a select number of the Patients, who listen attentively. On Friday a fiddler attends, and the Patients are allowed to dance – the males together and the females together. This is said to delight them very much, but has no permanent effect on them either to the better or the worse. The general state of health was good; and the Registers were accurately kept. [Memoranda Regarding the Royal Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary and Dispensary of Montrose, Richard Poole (Montrose, 1841)"
On wards and upwards and you wander through what was probably a recreation room, an old pool table still in the corner.
Next door is a lone piano, still kicks out a note or 2.
Nearby is a Singer sewing machine.
Continuing up, you start to get a scale of the main hospital buildings, long corridors and small octagonal towers. The boiler house in the background, but ran out of time to see if it was possible.
Apart from the main hall, these corridors with the peeling paint were great to see.
There's little left in the building, but good to see a lot of the features like the fireplaces were still in place.
"From the initial site on Montrose Links, the hospital moved to Sunnyside farm in 1858 following a nationwide review three years earlier by the Scottish Lunacy Commission. There was a growing site for patients on the new site, leading to the provision of a new facility for private patients named Carnegie House, which opened in 1899. Howden Villa and Northesk Villa opening in 1901 and 1904 to house non-paying patients. Angus House, an annex for dementia patients, was built 40 years later. Around this time, in 1940, patient numbers reached the maximum recorded, 1052. But pressure on the hospital’s resources had levelled off, in terms of inpatient need, throughout the 1950s and 1960s because of new drugs and improved treatments. In 1962 the institution was renamed Sunnyside Royal Hospital and came under the jurisdiction of new management. Sunnyside Royal Hospital celebrated its bicentenary in 1981, at which time the number of patients was nearly 400."
The link corridors on the ground floor were very photogenic, just took a couple of photos on the way out and had another look at this floor as I had a better understanding of the layout of the building by now.
This is inside one of the small octagonal towers, an interesting room, but thought it was a shame to have split it in half.
I must have walked straight past the kitchens and dinning area on the way in, too busy scarring teenage girls outside. All that really remains are the extractor fans in the well lit room.
But also a nice looking industrial mixer which was great to see hadn't been trashed.
Well that was my flying visit to Sunnyside Royal Hospital (Just over an hour onsite), like so many places recently I wish I'd visited sooner, but will no doubt be pass again in the near future, there's the out buildings which need a visit.
An hour later I was sat with a nice meal and a safety brew, still chuckling at the reaction I got when I banged on the opaque window, and wondering if they had stopped running and screaming yet.
Second Visit - May 2018
Roll on 4 weeks and I just happened to be passing again, the main reason to stop again was Carnegie House.
Not sure if it was open when I last visited, but had been shut up tight the following week when @Baggy trousers visited. As it turned out luck was on my side. Even better I bumped into a local guy from Norway who was a wealth of knowledge on the history of the place and was glad to come in for a mooch with me.
The carpets here were lush and deep, obvious that money had been invested in this building. Inside there wasn't as much of interest as I'd hoped, the attic was full of pipe work and small offices, the rest of the building just large open rooms. However there was a nice timbered room on the ground floor.
As well as the room I had made a revisit for.
This was by all account the snooker room, the roof in here is stunning. There are 12 panels, each one has a sign of the zodiac on.
That was worth the revisit for me. While I was at Sunnyside it would have been rude not to see what else was accessible. Turned out most of it was apart from the church and the engineering workshops. The 2 newer buildings were a bit of a let down and structurally in a far worse state than the older buildings. A couple of twee Urbex shots from these buildings.
You have to have a chair photo.
Plus the remains of a bed decaying next to an open window.
A quick trip into the main block to try and get a photo from the balcony in the hall didn't work out as the door to the balcony was locked. Pretty depressing to see quite a few things having been trashed in the 4 weeks since my last visit. The sewing machine was now in a hundred bits over the floor!
At the other end of the site was the hospital, enjoyed popping in here. Structurally it's seen better days and looking at the floor has seen the odd person dropping through in many of the corridors. Upstairs it was even worse so only had a brief look up there, don't think I missed much though.
It was the wards off the main corridor on the ground floor which I liked.
The curtain rails and bed side lights still in place.
Again it got to that time to head up the road again for a nice meal and a safety brew.
That's Sunnyside Royal Hospital more or less covered in 2 flying visits, I must have seen 80% of the site. A good chance I'll be back before re-development work starts at the end of the year, but will probably find somewhere else to break my journey up next time.
Cheers, TLR.
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