Three Counties Hospital
All images supplied by Richard Knight.
This month we continue the story of Three
Counties Asylum. It is written and researched by Richard Knight, who has developed his website and local exhibitions dedicated to the history and artefacts of the
hospital. Part 2 centres around the design,
building, opening and first few decades running up to the first world war.
George Fowler Jones had designed Three Counties Asylum in a gothic
romantic style with a medieval French influence. He had taken some of
his inspiration following a visit to Hatfield house, and Three Counties was
designed in what was known as ‘The Corridor Style’. This was favoured by
asylum builders of the time. It meant that people did not have to go through
wards or working areas when moving around the building. Jones had tried
to design his corridors to look like Elizabethan and Jaccobean long rooms
which he had seen in great stately homes, and these are evident in Jones’s
original asylum plans of 1856. The asylum was built to be the most modern
and cutting edge design of its day. It had to be elevated on the land, it was
built upon, and look handsome and cheerful in appearance. The inside was
to have no corners, this was so no patient could hide in a corner or feel
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March 2015
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Top: Photo taken by George Fowler Jones of the asylum with the clock
tower 1870. Above: George Fowler Jones.
threatened by dark gloomy areas, The wards had to be decorated plainly but
pleasing to the eye. It had to be light, airy, warm, comfortable, clean, tidy with
hot washing and bathing water plus indoor toilets. With one patient per bed,
there had to be plenty of ventilation on the wards to minimise smell, It was
also a strict Victorian rule that asylums must be designed to keep the sexes
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