Mind Matters

"If you don’t behave yourself, I'll send you to Fairfield's!". An idle threat maybe but it always scared the bejesus out of me when my mum said it.  For someone growing up in Bedfordshire or Hertfordshire in the 60's, 70's or 80's,  Fairfield's was shrouded in fear and mystery where unspeakable horrors were bestowed on the poor unfortunates that were sent there. The thought of it alone was enough to transform the most mischievous seven year old into a little angel in the blink of an eye.

An Infirmary Ward at Fairfield's

Of course in reality Fairfield was very different. Originally built on a 253 acre site in 1859 - 1860 it started life as Three Counties asylum serving Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Huntingdonshire. In those un-politically correct days all the lunatics, delusionals, psychotics and anyone else who was thought deserving of incarceration, was sent there.

BY our standards, treatments of mental illness weren't very sophisticated in mid-Victorian times. The powers that be thought regular doses of fresh air, a good diet and daily chores were enough to cure even the most committed (no pun intended) lunatic.

But it was the First World War that was mainly responsible for changes in the way patients were treated. The number of soldiers suffering shell shock was so high that a cure had to be found quickly.  Some of the 80,000 victims were put into private institutions, disused spas and county lunatic asylums of which Fairfield was one. Cures were many and varied and included electric shock therapy and psychotherapy. 

Student nurse and patient

By 1930 an act of parliament changed the word asylum to hospital. Employees were given better pay and working conditions and care in the mental health system generally, was improving all the time. Three Counties hospital as it was now called was well integrated in the community. It had a good football and cricket team, a bowls club and offered various social activities that were open to the public, including the famous galas attended latterly by celebrities like Pat Phoenix who played Elsie Tanner in Corrie and Bill Roach who still plays Ken Barlow. There was even a radio show called Workers Playtime broadcast from there.

In 1960 it was renamed Fairfield hospital. It was during this time that one of the chaplains the reverend John Arthur Monk made national news when he married a girl forty years his junior. They were the three counties equivalent of Anna Nicole Smith and J Howard Marshall II!

The hospital was finally closed in 1999 and is now being developed for housing. Fortunately the main buildings are Grade II listed and the façade has been sympathetically restored and turned into luxury flats and now that I'm a father the threat of dispatching my offspring to Fairfield's has completely lost its impact.