Severalls Mental Asylum was opened in May 1913, in an area of Colchester known as Myland. A large part of the Severalls Estate was sold off in order for the asylum to be built, along with a farm to supply the patients and for the patients to work on. The farm was known and still is known as Cuckoo Farm.

Severalls was built on the Echelon Plan. This means that the arrangement of wards, offices and services are within easy reach of each other by a network of interconnecting corridors. Typically forming a triangular, trapezium or semi-circular format. In the case of Severalls, it was semi-circular. Please click on the image to the left for a larger version.

At it's peak, Severalls housed some 3000 patients. With it being in the Echelon Plan, one side was for Male Patients, the other for Female Patients. As time went by, more Villas were built around the site, a notable one is Ivy Villa. Ivy Villa is a Butterfly groundplan villa situated outside of the perimeter fence, on the edge of a public footpath.One of it's first uses was as an infirmary for patients with TB. This building, like the entire site was split in half by sex. In later years Ivy Villa was used for the care of epileptics who did not need such intensive care as those placed in the main buildings. With it's glass veranda, bright day rooms and beautiful gardens it certainly seemed a wonderful place to recover. This picture was taken in September 2006. Since then, it has suffered at least one arson attack and more vandalism.

Most people who go into Severalls are utterly astounded by the corridors.
There are few places which have such long corridors. Sometimes it feels as if they disappear into the horizon.
Nurses say there used to be no windows and that bats used to fly after them at night.
Sound travels down them like it does through a concert hall.
They are one of a kind.

In 1960 a Doctor named Russell Barton was appointed the as the Physician Superintendent of Severalls. This is where change started.
More people were discharged, rather than, as had been before, kept insitutionalised for their entire lives.
He believed in deinstitutionalisation and tried his best to make it happen. If he were still alive, he would despair at the state of "Care in the Community". He did not believe in the revolving door policy that seems to plague so many hospitals now.
He introduced activities for patients such as men helping in engineering and women working in the tailor's and sewing room.
This led to an improvement in the conditions of many people who were patients at Severalls.
It was further proof, that the ideas he explored in his Institutional Neurosis were most likely true.

After Dr. Barton's departure the hospital was properly made part of a larger "trust".
Like a lot of hospitals, this seems to have been the downfall.
Spending was now regulated by a faceless board who had no idea of the real needs of a psychiatric hospital.

During the 1970s, surgery for local patients who had no mental illness, was introduced at Severalls.
I have heard personal accounts of people who refused to enter Severalls for surgery stating that,
the stigma of anyone else knowing they had been in Severalls for any reason, would be too embarrassing.

Eventually the hospital was wound down until, in 1997, it was finally closed.
The site inside the perimeter fence has since laid derelict. Only gypsies, and those who wish to do nothing but vandalise it, have been in.
However, in the recent past, I have been one of a number of Urban Explorers who have ventured in.

I fell in love with the place the instant that I entered. It's truly beautiful and so sadly neglected.
Early in 2007 the site was finally sold and now, a large proportion of it will be knocked down for housing,
or will be forever altered into the next ugly housing estate that Britain does not need.

Colchester United's new football ground is being built on the former Cuckoo Farm.
The plans for the hospital include keeping the Admin building, and the Water Tower.
The frontage of many of the wards and corridors will be kept.
The rest, will be demolished. New houses built, old buildings converted.
I hope the new residents are not ignorant to the site's history. I hope at least a few of them care.

Go on to the photos from September or October. Or return to the Main Page.