Hortham Idiot Colony/Hospital, A brief History.

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mcspringzy

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Hortham, was the first institution to be functionally designed and built as a complete Colony, and designed to care for just over 600 patients.

Under the Mental Health Act 1913 Section 38, Bristol City Council decided to acquire land and build an institution for the care of the mentally handicapped which was to become Hortham Idiot Colony

The search for a suitable site took a while, because of WW1 going on.
In 1924, after a long review of various land plots, a 126 acre site was choosen. It was purchased for the some of £4,788 and was essentially agricultural land.

During construction, various roman artifacts were found, some of which are displayed in Bristol City Museum

The architects were W.S Skinner and sons, and the main contractor H.Bell and sons. Work started on 14th May 1929 to the total cost of £215,000. The contracter completed the work by May 1931, and the Colony was handed over to the Bristol Corporation, where the furnishing and equipping of the buildings then followed. Six months later, the first patients were admited.

April 29th 1933, Hortham officially opened its doors.

Hortham has been commonly misconcepted as a "Mental Institute for Children", it had patients off all ages, included the famous MurdererJohn Straffen (Britains longest serving prisoner).

Hortham was an "open" colony which specialised in training mentally defective offenders for resettlement in the community

Hortham finally scaled down its work in 1988 and finally closed its doors in late 1991. Since then was left derelict, during the 90's it was the playground of Travellers for a few years, till they had stolen everything of any value there, cut bake and left. And from then on fell pray to vandals and arsonists. Since 1998 various planning applications were submitted but all were denied, for what reason is unknown. But in 2005 one from Barret / Taylor Woodrow was submitted after all they did own the land. They won, which suprised everyone as nearly all of the local residents to Hortham Hospital objected. And in 2006, demolition work started courtesy of Bath Demolition, during which, they "accidentally" cut down various trees with Tree Preservation orders on. But work was slowed down because they discovered Slow Worms and Bats nesting. They also discovered Asbestos which heeded there attemps abit. By the end of 2006, all buildings were reportedly gone. Crappy over priced houses have since been built on the "foundations" of the former hospital.
Anyway, heres the pictures.


Then & Now

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Aerial view from the late 30's.

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A fairly recent "birds eye view" from maps.live.com

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A picture of Admin taking around 1931 after work completed.

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Admin 2006 Picture is Funkymonkeys, hope you dont mind me borrowing it

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Some females playing Netball

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A near enough shot, you get the idea

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Another simalar shot.

(I didnt want to use to many of other peoples pictures, plus, I lost hundreds of original exploration pictures because of a poor harddrive)

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A wards day room

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Not quite the same, but you get the idea.

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Front gates, during its opening.



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A shot from the right of the gates, 2006. (Please excuse the gray bit at the bottom, thats what damage the broken harddrive did)

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Main Hall, 1930.

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Main Hall, feb 2006.

Thats it really as far as my pictures go, I really dont have many left. Ill put a few more of Hortham in its old days up.

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Patients doing Laundry


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One of the medical hut things built during WW2

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One last of the older shots, this is the Hortham Cricket team outside there cricket hut thing.

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Cricket hut more recently.


Well, I've been typing, resizing, searching and moving for the last twos hours for this :neutral: Have fun, mcspringzy.

All of the older images were used courtesy of Glenside Museum. The rest are my own unless otherwise stated.
 
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Re: Hortham Idiot Colony/Hospital, A breif History.

Fantastic report mate, Love the old pics compared with the new, that day room looks so strange of all the "day rooms" that I have marched through I find it hard to imagine that any of them looked like that:exclaim::)
 
Re: Hortham Idiot Colony/Hospital, A breif History.

Absolutely brill report. Well done mate, that must have taken some effort to get the pics, etc, together. Shame about your hard drive. :(
Interesting to see the layout is pretty much the same. Love the old cricket pavillion. :mrgreen:

Cheers Mac. :) How ya doing, btw? Still in the 'Gateway to the South-West'? ;)
 
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Re: Hortham Idiot Colony/Hospital, A breif History.

Interesting to see the layout is pretty much the same. Love the old cricket pavillion. :mrgreen:

Was pretty much the same. The whole place was demolished in december 2006. :(
 
Re: Hortham Idiot Colony/Hospital, A breif History.

Was pretty much the same. The whole place was demolished in december 2006. :(

Ah, sorry about that...must've misread it. I thought the second map was where the new housing had been constructed. I thought it was a bit too sympathetic for developers! ;)
 
Re: Hortham Idiot Colony/Hospital, A breif History.

Alas no, Hortham is no more than a pile of rubble in some landfill site now :(
 
This place looked gorgeous when it was the opening ceremony, love all the then and now pics. Especially as you can see how lovely it was and then all left derelict. Love the main hall, that looks great when the place was open.

Sorry about your hard drive, seems most of us are having probs with the pc's at the moment :(

Cheers,

:) Sal
 
Top stuff MC :)

The main hall is a different style -almost art nouveu in shape. Reminds me of the shape of those old Gypsy Caravans. Shame it's all gone. Well done to you and FunkeyMonkey for getting some pics as a record of this now long gone Hospital. Thanks again matey :)

Lb:cool:
 
NICE my mate that way was tempting me over about a year ago as it hadnt been explored or we couldnt find any reports on it back then
 
Top stuff MC :)

The main hall is a different style -almost art nouveu in shape. Reminds me of the shape of those old Gypsy Caravans. Shame it's all gone. Well done to you and FunkeyMonkey for getting some pics as a record of this now long gone Hospital. Thanks again matey :)

Well it was built from 1929-1931! Much later than the victorian asylums.

NICE my mate that way was tempting me over about a year ago as it hadnt been explored or we couldnt find any reports on it back then

I first posted this place up in early 2005. Not sure where you must have been looking ;)
 
Thanks everyone for the possitive comments :)

I'm not sure how useful these are but some of my photos can be found here and here.

I tried looking for your pictures, because knew you had a load. But couldnt find hortham on the menu on the infiltration bit.


DSCF0969.jpg




I've got that leaflet in my loft, I picked it up about 2 weeks before the Main Hall came down.
 
Great stuff McSpringzy,

Very nice to see the old photos of the site, and it is a great shame so many images of yours were lost on the hard drive - theres a lot to be said for backing up stuff.

I'm not 100% sure about this statement:
Hortham, was the first institution to be functionally designed and built as a complete Colony.
I've seen it said elsewhere, but being a bit of an anorak/purist i tend to disbelieve this kind of statement - in fact there are a handful of earlier colonies opened during the preceding 20 years. Just me picking at things...;)

A really nice write up/history otherwise!:)

Pete
 
Re: Hortham Idiot Colony/Hospital, A breif History.

Cheers Mac. :) How ya doing, btw? Still in the 'Gateway to the South-West'? ;)

Yeah, im still here! Are you? And im alright thanks, yourself?



Pete C said:
I've seen it said elsewhere, but being a bit of an anorak/purist i tend to disbelieve this kind of statement - in fact there are a handful of earlier colonies opened during the preceding 20 years. Just me picking at things...


I was in disbelief when I read that too, but I read it previously in the Hortham Hospital Golden Anniversary book.
 
Thanks for that, interesting little writeup. I like the design of the hall - very unusual, especially with its curved stage area that follows the shape of the rest of the room.
 
Hey there,

I'm planning a trip to this neck of the woods shortly - does anybody know he current status of Hortham? Much left to see?

Ta.
 
Hey there,

I'm planning a trip to this neck of the woods shortly - does anybody know he current status of Hortham? Much left to see?

Ta.

Yeah, there's hundreds of barratts boxes to see.

(It was demolished almost 2 years ago now).
 
The origional images are superb, its great to be able to compare them to how it looks now.
 

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