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Welcome to the Meanwood Park Hospital Website.
As the age of the large institution fades, the memories of those who experienced life there first hand, become a valuable source of historical information.
The aim of this website is to collect those memories of the people who lived, worked and were associated with Meanwood Park Hospital and to produce a digital archive of recollections to provide a learning resource for future generations.
By the people, for the people.... all contributions are welcome.
Help create a living, breathing archive by contributing your story or recollections.
History is in your hands.
An Overview of Meanwood Park Hospital.
The Mental Deficiency Act of 1913, empowered Leeds City Council to make residential provision for those people today described as having Learning Disabilities, previously known as Mental Deficiency, then Subnormality (1959) and Mental Handicap (1970s).
For this purpose the Council acquired/obtained the Meanwood Park Estate.
The first resident aged just ten was admitted to Meanwood Hall in August 1919, and the facility was ceremoniously opened on 3rd June 1920.
In the twenties and thirties, buildings were erected in the grounds by the City Council and the site became a Hospital in the National Health Service on 5th July 1948.
On 1st April 1974, the Hospital came within the Leeds Area Health Authority (Teaching) Eastern District, on 1st April 1982 under the control of the Leeds Eastern Health Authority, and from 1st April 1993, a part of the Leeds Community & Mental Health Services Teaching NHS Trust.
Meanwood Park Hospital accommodated men, women and, until the 1980s, children.
It served the city of Leeds and extensive surrounding areas in the former West Riding of Yorkshire. The beds reached a maximum of 841 in the mid sixties.
From 1970 the number gradually reduced, (1970 800, 1973 600, 1983 500, 1987 400, 1990 300, 1995 200), as long stay residents were resettled and discharged. In 1972, 73 residents transferred to the new Fieldhead Hospital at Wakefield, in the seventies, 99 residents went out to live in Social Services
hostels.
From 1982, 238 residents moved into reprovided NHS houses and bungalows and to accommodation in the independent sector. The hospital closed in 1997, with the surrounding site developed into housing.
Website Launch December 2008
Please Email Us At: meanwoodpark@googlemail.com |
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24 comments in this gallery
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| 1 | Bed & Breakfast | A Chronicle Of Meanwood Park, Part 1 | (635) |
| 2 | Class Of 1932 | A Chronicle Of Meanwood Park, Part 1 | (606) |
| 3 | Female Dining Room | A Chronicle Of Meanwood Park, Part 1 | (511) |
| 4 | Dr D A Spencer | A Chronicle Of Meanwood Park, Part 1 | (482) |
| 5 | Villa Dormitory | A Chronicle Of Meanwood Park, Part 1 | (480) |
| 6 | Map | A Chronicle Of Meanwood Park, Part 1 | (474) |
| 7 | Open Air Activities | A Chronicle Of Meanwood Park, Part 1 | (474) |
| 8 | Inspection | A Chronicle Of Meanwood Park, Part 1 | (456) |
| 9 | Dr Peter Harvey, Physician Superintendent 1964 - 1969 | A Chronicle Of Meanwood Park, Part 1 | (443) |
| 10 | Stolen Lives | Archive Images | (412) |
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A knowledge of history is no mere diversion; without it, those fertile avenues of thought which have so often led to innovation and advance must be explored again, and without it the lesson of many a disastrous mistake which should have been learnt will be suffered once more..
Patient number 1 was Mr Frank Tottie, admitted on 25th August 1919 aged just 10. He lived in the hospital for over 60 years to his death on 17th November 1979.
* Our Other Digital Archives *
www.highroydshospital.co.uk
High Royds, Psychiatric Hospital
Opened on the 8th October 1888, the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum as it was then known, became High Royds in 1963. One of the last remaining psychiatric hospitals of it's kind to be still functioning when it closed in 2003.
www.stanleyroydhospital.co.uk
STANLEY ROYD
The building was necessary to care for the treatment and care of the insane poor, and work began on it in 1816. The main builders were John Robson, John Billinton and William Pockrin - all from Wakefield. Work was completed and the hospital occupied by the 23rd of November 1818. The eventual cost of the building work was £23,000 being £7,000 more than the contracted price. The total cost was shown in the records as £36,448. 4s. 9Όd.
The building stood in an area of 25 acres. For privacy the grounds were surrounded by plantation in either Wakefield or Stanley to be quiet, peaceful and secluded. It was a much needed hospital for in the early part of the 19th century very little was available by way of treatment for mental illness. Before the opening of this asylum, sufferers were incarcerated in prisons, workhouses or in their own homes at none of which treatment was available except for purging, bleeding or mechanical restraint.
Both these sites are available via direct links in the links section below.
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See The Links Section For The
"Meanwood Park" Video,
Entitled "Geoffrey Abbott"
Featuring Geoffrey Abbott, former Service User Along with Archive Images. |
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Documents the introduction of the Community Care Act in April 1993 and the closure of many of Britain's older mental hospitals. This report reveals how thousands of people, who were locked away in institutions for long periods of their lives, were never mentally ill in the first place. They were incarcerated for being deaf or pregnant or simply unwanted, but, once committed they were automatically deemed insane, and had no way of escaping. Includes the personal testimonies of a number of victims of this cruel and outdated system.
This programme is in 6, ten minute segments and can be
viewed by hitting the links in the link box above.
In part one Geoffrey Abbott is featured, Geoffrey spent 22 years in Meanwood wrongly diagnosed as a mental defective.
He was in fact deaf and of above intelligence, it was that very intelligence that kept him sane for all those years.
Executive Officer Squires took him,after his father signed the papers required to remove him to Meanwood.
He was eventually rescued by Martin Smith, Geoffrey also features in part 5.
For John, for Ethel and Frances, for Geoffrey and for Jimmy, time slipped down the decades and took their lives away.
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