Title:
WARLEY HOSPITAL
Level: Category
Public records
Level: Fonds
WARLEY HOSPITAL
Scope and Content:
Essex County Lunatic Asylum, known later as Brentwood Mental Hospital and finally as Warley Hospital, was built as a result of the Lunatic Asylums Act of 1845, making it compulsory for all counties to build an asylum. The asylum opened in 1853 on a site in Brentwood (not in Warley).

The Essex Quarter Sessions order books record that in June 1848 82 acres of land were purchased from Mr Kavanagh of the Brentwood Hall estate for £8,000 (Q/SO 40, p. 240), although a report given by the Lunatic Asylum Committee at the Quarter Sessions on 3 January 1854 describes the site as 86 acres (Q/SO 42, p. 34). The firm of Kendall and Pope were appointed as architects.

Plans to build accommodation for 300 patients were discouraged by the Lunacy Commissioners as inadequate. The plans were re-submitted to accommodate 200 men and 200 women, and during construction it was found that due to the slope of the land it would be possible to add an extra ward for female patients underneath another (Q/SO 40 p. 40).

The minutes and annual reports contain frequent references to overcrowding and the need to find further accommodation. Additional blocks were built in the 1860s and in 1888. The West Ham Borough Asylum (later Goodmayes Hospital) opened in 1901 but although patients chargeable to the Borough were transferred there, overcrowding at Warley persisted. In 1913 a second asylum opened at Severalls, north of Colchester. Few records of Severalls Hospital survive, although the records of Warley Hospital include some patients who were transferred there after Severalls was bombed in the Second World War. Secondary sites used by Warley Hospital to house chronic, long term patients included Brunswick House in Mistley, Lea Hall in Leyton, The Chestnuts in Walthamstow and Harold Court in Harold Wood. Patients were also boarded out to other asylums as far away as Middlesbrough.

During the Second World War, the Admission Hospital and Convalescent Villa were to be used for casualties in emergencies. This area seems then to have become known as Warley Woods Hospital (A/H 10/1/3/22-23). It appears that patients from the Royal London Hospital were transferred to a number of hospitals during this period, including Warley Woods. Researchers interested in patients admitted to Warley Woods Hospital should contact the Royal London Hospital Archives and Museum; unless they were later admitted to Warley Hospital, these patients are unlikely to appear in the records held by the Essex Record Office.

Warley Hospital closed progressively in the late 1990s and its records were deposited with the Essex Record Office. Prior to deposit, some records were badly burned in a fire at the hospital and others were damaged by damp. These records require assessment to determine whether they can be repaired and produced.

When Warley Hospital finally closed in 2001, a corner of the site remained in use under the name Mascalls Park Hospital. This in turn closed in 2011, services being transferred to Goodmayes Hospital.

To find out whether records survive for a particular patient in Warley you need, at the least, their full name and preferably an approximate date when they entered the hospital. Each patient was given a number, which can be traced in the male and female indexes. The number in turn can be used to check whether reception orders or case book entries survive.
Access:
Records containing sensitive medical information are subject to access restrictions for 100 years. Enquiries and requests for review of such records relating to individuals should be sent to the Essex Record Office, Wharf Road, Chelmsford CM2 6YT.