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Home > Hertfordshire Publications > A Place in the Country
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A Place in the Country

Three Counties Asylum 1860-1999

Author: Judith Pettigrew, Rory W. Reynolds , Sandra Rouse

Price: £12.99 (free postage)

"

“This book provides an excellent account of the... asylum over 140 years”

-Chris Reynolds,
Hertfordshire Genealogy

About the book

“The text describes how [the asylum] provided work for many locals, and gives a detailed account of the buildings themselves and of the staff and patients who populated them. The buildings included a chapel - St Luke's - and a nurses' home, and even an on-site brewery! Even without ancestors in the Three Counties area it is a useful book on the subject of asylum care.” Paul Gaskell, Oxfordshire Family Historian

“The book is absorbing to read... with extensive footnotes to every chapter, pertinent illustrations and a comprehensive index, this is a book I would recommend you read, to inform and educate, about this sensitive subject, and about the history of 'Fairfield' as a hospital, local employer and institution.” Jane Tunesi, Hertfordshire People

“This book gives a vivid, detailed account of the buildings, staff and patients who occupied the hospital. Its authors are well qualified to tell us this story, for they share backgrounds in social anthropology, occupational and family therapy and psychotherapy.” Ruth Jeavons, Herts Past & Present

“… comprehensively gives a history of, not only the Three Counties Asylum, but also of the changes of attitudes to and treatment of mental illness over the lifetime of the institution.” Janet Morris, CALH Review

In the mid-1850s, the counties of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire set about looking for a site for a new asylum to house their 'pauper lunatics'. Two hundred acres of farmland at Stotfold on the Hertfordshire—Bedfordshire border were purchased and in March 1860 the first patients were admitted to the new Three Counties Asylum (TCA).

The asylum was in operation for almost a century and a half and, as approaches to treating mental illness changed, so did TCA. When it first opened, in the wake of the 1845 Lunacy Act, it was with the intention of providing humane treatment to replace the harsh regimes in private madhouses, prisons and workhouses.

In time, drugs and other therapies were developed that were sometimes successful in alleviating symptoms. Finally, as the era of institutional care ended, Fairfield Hospital, as it came to be known, closed its doors in 1999.

  • More about the book

    This is a revised edition of A Place in the Country and focuses on the history of the Three Counties Asylum. It gives a detailed account of the buildings themselves and of the staff and patients who populated them.

    A vivid picture emerges of a community that in some respects was as self-contained as a village and provided work for many locals as well as an enclosed place for very vulnerable people.

  • View the table of contents

    Contents


     Acknowledgementsvii
     List of Illustrationsix
     Introductionxi
    1Planning and Building the Asylum1
    2The Social Landscape of a Victorian Asylum27
    3Edwardian Psychiatry and the First World War58
    4Modernisation, New Therapies and the NHS85
     Appendix: Schedule of Forms of Insanity115
     Index117

  • About the Author/s:

    Judith Pettigrew

    Judith Pettigrew is a social anthropologist and an occupational therapist with a PhD from the University of Cambridge. She is a senior lecturer in the Department of Clinical Therapies at the University of Limerick.


    Rory W. Reynolds

    Rory Reynolds is a systemic family psychotherapist in CAMHS Bedfordshire. Alongside his mental health work, Rory runs a successful theatre company and is the longstanding artistic director of the Queen Mother Theatre in Hitchin.


    Sandra Rouse

    Sandra Rouse is also a social anthropologist with a PhD from the University of Cambridge.

ISBN: 978-1-909291-50-8 Format: Paperback, 136pp Published: Sep 2017

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Any questions

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