By the end of the 19th century, around 120 County Asylums were operating across England and Wales (Scotland had its own system of Royal and District Asylums). They were mainly constructed under the auspices of two key pieces of legislation – the County Asylums Act and the Lunacy Act, both passed in 1845 – and were intended as a progressive step, representing a publicly funded and properly regulated alternative to previous approaches to mental health care (see box below). Despite these worthy intentions, however, such institutions rapidly became associated more with confinement than with effective treatment. Since the development of ‘care in the community’ policies in the 1980s, though, most of these complexes have now closed, their buildings converted to other uses or demolished altogether. While plentiful documentary evidence survives to testify to how these sites operated, archaeological remains can offer thought-provoking insights into the experiences of those who lived and worked within their walls.
Such tangible traces were uncovered on the site of what would ultimately be known as Clifton Hospital, at Clifton Ings, a north-western suburb of York. There (working for Jacobs UK Limited and BAM Nuttall on behalf of the Environment Agency), York Archaeology carried out excavations and watching briefs ahead of flood defence improvements along the River Ouse. These investigations, undertaken in riverside fields directly to the north and west of the former hospital, uncovered features spanning many centuries, from ditches containing Iron Age and Romano-British pottery to evidence of medieval ridge-and-furrow farming. Most significant for the subject of this article, though, was a rubbish dump and other finds relating to the hospital’s earlier incarnations serving the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire. Its contents provide poignantly personal echoes of some of the institution’s occupants, as well as highlighting how attitudes towards mental health had evolved over the site’s lifespan.
The evolution of Clifton Hospital
The story of institutionalised mental health care in the York area begins long before the foundation of the Clifton complex. The subscription-funded York Lunatic Asylum (later Bootham Park Hospital) was founded just outside the city walls in 1777, followed two years later by the Quaker-run York Retreat (which, in stark contrast to the squalid conditions for which the former site became notorious, pioneered a more compassionate approach, eschewing restraints and physical punishments and emphasising the dignity of its patients). Local authorities for the West Riding of Yorkshire established a County Asylum in Wakefield in 1818, but it was not until 1843 that the councils of the North and East Ridings decided to jointly found a Pauper Lunatic Asylum of their own at Clifton.
Living among ruins