Report - St. John's Hospital (Lincolnshire County Lunatic Asylum), Bracebridge Heat, Dec 10

KooK · Dec 5, 2010

Visited with jST

After visiting Lincoln County Hospital we headed down the road to St. John's Hospital with plans to head for maltings action shortly after. The snow was nice and fresh all around, with evidence of a security patrol a couple of days before.

Once we'd walked almost the whole perimeter we eventually found an AP into a meeting room, but that's as far as we got as the internal door was locked! We eventually found a way into the main building and had pretty free roaming around, we did have a bit of a scare when we thought we saw someone stood at the bottom end of a corridor, it turned out to be a trick of the eye, it was just a hole in a breeze block wall :rolleyes:

If I'm back in the area I might have to pop by to climb the water tower, it was a bit icy to even think about it on this occasion.

Formerly, the Lincolnshire County Lunatic Asylum. The Asylum was built in 1852 and enlarged on several subsequent occasions. It was originally established jointly by Lindsey, Kesteven, Holland, Lincoln, Grimsby and Stamford, and managed by a Board of Visitors appointed by the contributing authorities. Kesteven and Grantham withdrew from the arrangement when the contract of Union expired in 1893 (eventually establishing the Kesteven County Asylum at South Rauceby, 1897). The hospital was set in grounds of 120 acres which included gardens, farmland and a burial ground. In 1940 female patients were transferred to other hospitals, mainly Storthes Hall near Huddersfield, to make space for an Emergency Hospital, and many did not return until well after the end of the War. Administration of the hospital passed to the National Health Service in 1948. By the early 1960s it was known by its final name of St John's Hospital. Patients were admitted from Harmston Hall Hospital when that hospital closed. St John's Hospital itself was closed in December 1989 with the remaining patients transferred to other establishments. The site was sold for housing and most of the buildings apart from the central block were demolished.

The following names, among others, were used for the Institution, sometimes interchangeably:
1852-1893 Lincolnshire County Lunatic Asylum or Lincolnshire County Pauper Lunatic Asylum
1894-1915 Lincolnshire Lunatic Asylum
1897-1898 Lindsey, Holland, Lincoln and Grimsby District Pauper Lunatic Asylum
1903-1920 Lincolnshire Asylum
1898-1902 Bracebridge Pauper Lunatic Asylum
1902-1919 Bracebridge District Lunatic Asylum
1919-1948 Bracebridge Mental Hospital
1930-1938 Lincolnshire Mental Hospital
1939-1960 Bracebridge Heath Hospital
1961-1989 St John's Hospital, Bracebridge Heath

The hospital was also used as a wartime Emergency Hospital in the period 1940-1943, and a few records of this function survive with the asylum records.

The asylum was sold a few years after closure to a property developer who constructed nearly 1,000 new houses in the village. The original hospital buildings themselves are classified as Grade III listed buildings and are protected from demolition. During the redevelopment of the hospital site, a number of these protected buildings were refurbished and converted into flats and offices