Stafford County Lunatic Asylum

Photos - 29.
Where - Stafford.
Visited - 30 September 2007.
Posted - 15 January 2008.
Categories - asylum.

Stafford County Asylum opened in 1818 to accomodate 120 patients. Over the years it expanded and housed around 1000 patients. During the 1950s, it was renamed St George's Hospital. Like so many other asylums, it closed in the mid-1990s. There are plans to convert the Grade II listed buildings into "100 distinctive dwellings", and work should be starting in 2008.

Living in Stafford a few years ago, I would often get a tantalising glimpse of the asylum from the nearby ring-road. I sometimes wondered what it was like inside. I didn't do anything about it, indeed almost forgetting about it when I moved away. Five years later I finally got the chance to look around. Stafford Asylum is, by far, one of the most derelict buildings I have visited. Time has not been kind to it, suffering at the hands of both vandals and nature. There are no windows and very few ceilings. Floors are squidgy and rotten, if they are there at all!

Outside

You can't help but admire this behemoth of a building. At four storeys high and around 300m long, it would've made an impressive sight on the Stafford marshes in it's heyday. Sadly it's glory now hides behind a huge overgrown mess of trees.

Lower levels

The lower levels of the asylum are relatively interesting. Corridors, some isolation rooms (with the most colourful array of doors I have seen in an asylum), engineering rooms, a delightfully dingey pharmacy, and so on...

Chapels

There is a small double chapel in the asylum, strangely found on the second floor.

Main hall

The main hall is perculiar - it is full of scaffolding. Presumably an attempt to prevent it collapsing after previous arson attacks.

Stairs

The main staircase is rather impressive, a square-spiral affair complete with anti-suicide cages. Someone had tried to throw a door down, with no success.

Upper floors

There are huge holes in the roof, and they are slowly making their way down to ground-level. Needless to say, not much of the upper floors were explored...

Your Comments

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  1. Posted 23 January 2008, 20:50 From kath cox

    HI, WE found this so very sad, beleive it or not this was a very wonderful place, full of life and laughter, we, my husband and myself worked here for many years, tended ,beautiful gardens, and shared many happy times with patients for who, this was home,the chapel was lovely, main hall, place of many a dance, shows, pantamimes, boot ,sales, this was like a small villiage , with its farm, sports fields, gardens, tended,by people who spent their lives, in its confines, people who wept when made to move out into the community

    The years i spent at st georges were the happiest of my life, many old collegues still write to us in our retirement

    sincerely kath cox

  2. Posted 6 February 2008, 10:20 From Ruth

    how do you scale a fence like that? ladder o'clock?

  3. Posted 13 February 2008, 17:40 From STAFFORD NORTHEND LAD

    • Stafford County Lunatic Asylum photo thumbnail

    I HAVE A LOT OF MEMORIES AS A YOUNG LAD I USE TO CUT THROUGHT THE MAIN HOSPITAL 4 A SHORT CUT AND IN LATER LIFE I WAS IN MILLFORD WARD COMING OF DRUGS AND USE TO GO TO MAIN HOSPITAL TO MAKE BEDS IT DOS NOT LOOK LIKE WHAT I NEW OF IT THEN I REMBER THE HAIR DRESSER HE WAS GOOD HAD MY HAIR CUT THERE LOTS OF TIME HISTORY GONE I EVEN WORKED THERE ON MY WTS PUTTING THE PATH IN AT THE BOTTOM BY THE FILED

  4. Posted 3 March 2008, 17:10 From cazwix

    i love this building i have drove past it glad its been graded to be honist cant wait to see the out come and the fact it can still be saved

    cazwix

  5. Posted 14 March 2008, 09:50 From Len Smith

    I have done quite a bit of historical research on the Stafford asylum, some of which is included in my book - Leonard D. Smith - ' "Cure, Comfort and Safe Custody"; Public Lunatic Asylums in Early NIneteenth Century England' (1999). I also had an article published in 'Staffordshire Studies' in about 1999 - ' "The Brightest Ornament of Our Native County"; Staffordshire General Lunatic Asylum, 1818-1860'.

    A woman called Rebecca Wynter (from Stafford) has recently completed her PhD thesis at Bitrmingham University, dealing with the Stafford Gaol and the Stafford Asylum in the periods up to about 1860 - I cannot remember the exact title.

    I am really glad to see that the building will be saved, though it is a shame that it is going to be posh flats. The same thing has happened to the old Gloucester Asylum, which opened 5 years after Stafford in 1823.

  6. Posted 21 March 2008, 21:00 From Andy

    • Stafford County Lunatic Asylum photo thumbnail

    Your work is amazing, I want to start exploring different places, I guess I should start in Severalls Lunatic Asylum in Colchester as thats where I live, but how do you get stuck into it?

  7. Posted 29 March 2008, 21:10 From sar!!

    Hi Len! So sorry didn't get 2say much at Mark's do but was in mega rush really and only popped. loads to catch up on when we do meet properly and I am so jealous of you doing 3days! Bless u for mentioning the job in ur team too-who knows where the wind may blow me. lolxxxx

  8. Posted 6 May 2008, 22:40 From Liz

    I worked mainly on a ward just off the reception area as an auxilliary nurse. I also covered on all other wards. I am so glad that they closed the hospital.I found it to be a place of great sadness; how the patients were treated by the old school nurses; how patients had become so institutionalised and I was particulary overwhelmed by how many women had been put in there for having babies out of wedlock and killing their babies because it was socially unexceptable at the time. I remember the day that they had to put up the suicide cages. A patient had jumped from a top floor, there was blood everywhere in reception, there was such a commotion on the ward.

  9. Posted 12 May 2008, 18:50 From Houdinia

    It's amazing to think that this building was still inhabited less than 20 years ago. I worked at St. Georges hospital during the period that the patients were gradually being relocated into the the newly built units in the grounds or into the community. The hospital has a fascinating history and was always very atmospheric, especially at night. I lived at the nurses home just across from the main building. I remember that the grounds and buildings were beautiful and the main hospital was huge and labyrinthine. I was fortune to work with those who were too institutionalised to live independantly and they gave me some insight into what life was like for a patient of St. Georges. It's very sad to see what has become of such an important place.

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