Tone Vale Hospital
Photos - 8.
Where - Taunton, Somerset.
Visited - August 2008.
Posted - 2 September 2008.
Categories -
urbex, asylum.
Tone Vale Hospital was built in 1897 and closed in 1995. This is now pretty much totally converted into homes, and a few leisure services.
The main recreation hall is really the only derelict piece of interest left. Situated bang in the middle of the development, it contains a curious selection of junk - presumably from people now living in the converted parts...
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Posted 26 October 2008, 15:10 From PHILIP BINDING
I worked here during student holidays in 1958. Several of the patients seemed more sane than the staff and begged me to intervene with management to get them out on parole as they had been wrongly diagnosed as sectionable under the mental health act. I was too young and unknowledgeable to argue and risk being dismissed. It was particularly disturbing to know of patients who were forced against their will to submit to ECT but not obvious that they suffered long-term harm as a result. The sense that the staff always presumed in their own favour even though they knew they were out of their depth on the subject of treating mental illness successfully came over strongly. I learned that there was little prospect of anyone being rehabilitated to normal life and that the most the staff could do was to experiment on the patients and keep them subdued with suitable medication. Those people who were placed in an adjoining wing and were less seriously disturbed, predominantly those who had had nervous breakdowns, did seem to have a fair chance of recovery. To quote "Yes Minister" it seemed to be a piece of Civil Service logic - "Something must be done; this was something, therefore this was to be done"!
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