Epsom's Hospitals Cluster
Reproduced courtesy of Francis Frith.
Horton Manor 1890
Horton Lane, Epsom c.1900
Image courtesy of Surrey Libraries and is held in the
Epsom & Ewell Local And Family History Centre Collection (Links open in new windows)
Following legislation in 1888, the London County Council began building institutions to house up to 2000 pauper lunatics. Over a thousand acres at Horton were acquired in 1896. The London County Council bought the estate from Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, who seems to have gone to Australia. Not surprisingly, the estate by then was in bad shape. The estate agents, however, recognised a desperate buyer when they saw one. The estate was on the market at £35,000; but to get it, the LCC had to gazump another buyer, real or imaginary, and pay £35,900.
Composite 1930s OS Map showing the five Hospitals and the Horton Light Railway
Click on the map to see it full size but be aware that it is a large file approx 5.5MB
Image source Surrey History Centre (Opens in a new window)
The original plan was for six hospitals, with a total patient population of twelve thousand: the same as that of Epsom itself in 1900. The old manor house was converted and surrounded by short-term huts because of pressing need for accomodation. Work was carried on by day and night, in fine weather and in wet, and created havoc and complete ruin along the roads to the site. The Hook road, in particular, was unfit for such heavy traffic, being in places no more substantial or wider than a country lane.
Composite 1930s OS Map showing Manor Hospital
Click on the map to see it full size
Image source Surrey History Centre (Opens in a new window)
To avoid further complaints and compensation claims, the contractors for the Long Grove superstructure, Foster & Dicksee, obtained a Light Railway Order to enable a connecting railway to be built - see 'Railways Serving The Epsom Hospital Cluster'.
Composite 1930s OS Map showing Horton Hospital
Click on the map to see it full size
Image source Surrey History Centre (Opens in a new window)
Horton Hospital Fire Drill c.1910
Image Courtesy of Mr Piner
Horton Hospital Fire Brigade c.1913
Percy Walker Hepworth is shown seated in the first seat on the left.
Read more about Percy in our War Memorials section.
Image Courtesy of Mr Piner
Horton Hospital was built to a semi-circular design and opened in 1903. Long Grove, with the same basic design, was finished in 1906. St. Ebba's opened in 1904 as a colony for three hundred epileptic men housed in red brick villas. West Park did not open until 1924 and had a more modern design of linked two-storey blocks and pavilions.
Composite 1930s OS Map showing Long Grove Hospital
Click on the map to see it full size
Image source Surrey History Centre (Opens in a new window)
The Epsom hospitals were at the forefront of advances in psychiatric medicine. All ran a parole system allowing some patients access to the grounds and to the town. Between the wars they were associated with London research departments and introduced new treatments such as electro-convulsive therapy, insulin treatment, and induced malaria therapy.
Composite 1930s OS Map showing St Ebba's Hospital
Click on the map to see it full size
Image source Surrey History Centre (Opens in a new window)
Recruitment of staff was a constant problem at first. The untrained male attendants and female nurses received between £18 and £39 per annum and free board and lodging. Men had to ask permission to marry and only single women were employed. Often several members of a family worked at the hospitals and their social life was often based there.
Composite 1930s OS Map showing West Park Hospital
Click on the map to see it full size
Image source Surrey History Centre (Opens in a new window)
Male and female patients were assigned separate living and working areas and even received different amounts of food. The diet in the early years was closely controlled by the LCC and was balanced, adequate but plain. Like other hospital functions, food preparation was divided between a male side (baking and butchery) and a female side (cooking). Each hospital began with about fifty people employed on support services, including the farms, as against four hundred nursing staff.
The cluster hospitals were planned together to be self-sufficient for water, gas, electricity, sewage disposal and even the burial of the dead. Each had a central water tower acting as a focal point, and the footprint hospitals (Horton, Long Grove and West Park) lay over a network of access tunnels, while a central boiler house provided steam heating. The industrial plant was installed to high standards, but although services such as telephones could be introduced, it became increasingly difficult to modernise the systems.
All the hospitals depended on the labour of their patients to function. Those who were able worked on the farms or in the workshops, kitchens or laundries, or cleaned the wards. Each hospital baked its own bread, washed its own laundry, and made and repaired patients' clothes and boots, while workshops manufactured other goods such as brushes and tinware. Patients came to be paid, at first in a local economy of tokens or cigarettes, afterwards in money. In later years the tradition of work was continued in occupational therapy.
Manor Hospital Football Team 1938-9
Manor Hospital Hockey Team 1930
Manor Hospital Staff Christmas Party c.1932
Images courtesy of G Porter and Surrey Libraries and is held in the
Epsom & Ewell Local And Family History Centre Collection (Links open in new windows)
Sports matches between the hospitals were always important events; at first they were between staff teams, but more recently patients have played many sports too. Male attendants were sometimes recruited because they were good footballers, or could play a musical instrument and take part in the band that performed at concerts and regular staff and patient dances. There were also summer fetes and weekly cinema shows.
Great War Wounded in the Manor Hospital Grounds 1916
Images courtesy of G Porter and Surrey Libraries and is held in the
Epsom & Ewell Local And Family History Centre Collection (Links open in new windows)
During the First World War, Horton Hospital was taken over as a military hospital and its patients dispersed. It reopened in 1920, when wartime experiences led to changes in organisation and treatment in all mental hospitals. In the Second World War, Horton became an Emergency Medical Services hospital, receiving both civilian and military casualties and, after the War, Polish refugees. The other hospitals took additional patients and the Manor suffered bomb damage.
When the hospitals were founded, they were intended to be cut off from the surrounding community. The first changes in this policy came after the War, and the use of chlorpromazine and related drugs in the 1950s led to further changes. There was greater emphasis on occupational and social therapy, more voluntary admissions and shorter stays in hospital. Out-patient and day hospitals were established and patients sometimes went for holidays to the seaside
Source; Jeremy Harte, Bourne Hall Museum
Some extracts from the official reports on the early years of Horton Hospital can be read here Horton - Down the Years Note: This is a .pdf file so you may need to download Adobe Reader (available free from Adobe).
When a person died in one of the mental hospitals and no one was prepared to take responsibility for funeral arrangements then they were usually buried in hospital grounds - see our separate page on Horton Cemetery.
A Nurses experience of working at the hospitals can be read at My Time at Long Grove Hospital
Links to pages on this website:
Horton Cemetery
Horton Cemetery Burial Registers.html
Horton Hospital Chaplin Rev Hockly
External Links (open in a new window)
Lost Hospitals of London (http://ezitis.myzen.co.uk)
County Asylums
Index of English and Welsh Lunatic Asylums and Mental Hospitals
Industrial Railway Society
Exploring Surreys Past (www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk)
Surrey History Centre (www.surreycc.gov.uk/surreyhistorycentre)
Hospital Records Database (Find out which archive holds which records)
Horton Cemetery
Horton Cemetery Burial Registers.html
Horton Hospital Chaplin Rev Hockly
External Links (open in a new window)
Lost Hospitals of London (http://ezitis.myzen.co.uk)
County Asylums
Index of English and Welsh Lunatic Asylums and Mental Hospitals
Industrial Railway Society
Exploring Surreys Past (www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk)
Surrey History Centre (www.surreycc.gov.uk/surreyhistorycentre)
Hospital Records Database (Find out which archive holds which records)
1908 Patient Food Rations
These issues are not to be made in full unless they are actually required. Issues less that the full quantities allowed by the scale must be approved by the Medical Superintendent
Breakfast (Every day for both sexes)
Tea (Every day for both sexes)
Dinner
On four days a week a roast or boiled meat dinner is to be given. On the three remaining days the diet is to consist either of meat or potato pies, fish or Irish stew, broth or pea soup.
Puddings may be issued for dinner at the discretion of the Medical Superintendent on any day. The allowance of pudding shall be ½ lb or ½ pint for each patient. The allowance of meat or potato pie or fish when pudding is issued shall be half the ordinary allowance, with the full allowance of potatoes and 4 oz of other vegetable for both sexes.
When pudding is issued with Irish Stew or scotch broth both the quantities of stew and broth are to be halved. When pea soup is issued the full allowance is to be given, followed by a second course of pudding.
Breakfast (Every day for both sexes)
| Tea or Coffee | 1 pint |
| Bread | 6 ounce (males), 5 ounce (females) |
| Margarine | ½ ounce |
Tea (Every day for both sexes)
| Tea | 1 pint |
| Bread | 5 ounce (males), 4 ounce (females) |
| Margarine | ½ ounce |
| OR | |
| Jam | 1 ounce |
| Cake | 3 ounce (cost not to exceed 1¾d per pound when made at the asylum) |
| OR | |
| Extra Bread | 3 ounce |
Dinner
| Males | Females | ||
| Pork, Beef, Mutton or Bacon (roast or boiled) cooked meat, free from bone. | 5 ounce | 4 ounce | |
| Meat Pies Allowance of uncooked bone free meat | 5 ounce | 5 ounce | |
| Paste for pie crust | 4 ounce | 4 ounce | |
| OR | |||
| Potato Pies (separate formula) | |||
| Fish (baked, fried or boiled including bone) | 12 ounce | 10 ounce | |
| Melted butter only to be served with boiled fish | |||
| Irish Stew, Scotch Broth or Pea Soup | 12 ounce | 10 ounce | |
| Vegetables for all dinners (Except Irish Stew) | |||
| Potatoes unpeeled (2ounce less when peeled) | 9 ounce | 7 ounce | |
| Other vegetables including salad when in season | 8 ounce | 8 ounce | |
| OR | |||
| Potatoes only | 13 ounce | 11 ounce | |
| OR | |||
| Other vegetables only | 13 ounce | 11 ounce | |
| Bread | 4 ounce | 3 ounce | |
| With Irish Stew, Scotch Broth or Pea Soup | 5 ounce | 4 ounce |
Note
On four days a week a roast or boiled meat dinner is to be given. On the three remaining days the diet is to consist either of meat or potato pies, fish or Irish stew, broth or pea soup.
Puddings may be issued for dinner at the discretion of the Medical Superintendent on any day. The allowance of pudding shall be ½ lb or ½ pint for each patient. The allowance of meat or potato pie or fish when pudding is issued shall be half the ordinary allowance, with the full allowance of potatoes and 4 oz of other vegetable for both sexes.
When pudding is issued with Irish Stew or scotch broth both the quantities of stew and broth are to be halved. When pea soup is issued the full allowance is to be given, followed by a second course of pudding.
October 1908
