How park nearly became a ‘mental colony’ for thousands of patients
IT WAS in the spring of 1935 that the Lancashire Council Mental Hospitals Board, under the clerkship of Sir George Hammond Etherton OBE, announced that there was to be a new Lancashire County Asylum built to bring the mentally ill patients out of the Poor Law system.
The estimated cost at that time was £1,500,000 and a sub-committee was formed to visit various sites.
Lathom Park Estate was selected for further investigation.
Members of the subcommittee arranged to meet and speak to the owners of the estate and establish the suitability of the 600 acre site for the proposed “mental colony”.
The chosen part of the estate was bought for £39,000.
A competition was held for the design in 1936-7, entries were to be judged by Belfast born architect Charles Ernest Elcock, John Kirkland, a civil service architect and Sir Patrick L Abercrombie, lecturer in architecture at Liverpool University – all fellows of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
The winning architect was JM Sheppard & Partners of Bloomsbury, the firm that had built the Foundling Hospital Museum.
Lathom Colony was to be built on the 600-acre, wooded site, part of Lathom Park estate.
The hospital was to comprise a mental hospital for 1,000 patients and an institution for 2,000 “mental defectives”.
The conditions of the competition suggested the south of site for the hospital, and buildings had to conform with the suggestions and instructions relating to mental hospitals published in 1933.
Accommodation required included an admissions hospital, convalescent villas, four villas for special cases, a sick hospital, villas for working patients, closed units for “excited cases”, single storey wards, epileptic wards and “undefined” wards.
An administration block, along with recreation hall, workrooms, three large shops, sports ground, general stores, canteen, nurses’ home,
Medical officers residences, and accommodation for clerk, steward, and engineers were planned along with a church.
For the mental deficiency colony, the plan included villas for adults, 50-60 in each, classified as epileptics, troublesome, and low grade, also accommodation for children with a 50 bed and 40 bed building, also termed low grade.
There would also be a general hospital.
In August 1936, Sir George Etherton announced that tenders for the new colony at Lathom were being sought.
On September 1, 1939, there was a ceremonial cutting of the first sod for the Mental Health Asylum and Colony at Lathom Park.
With an increased estimated cost of £2,124,000, the hospital would have 1,000 beds and the colony would have room for a further 2,000 suffering from mental deficiency.
Those present at the ceremony included the chairman of Lancashire County Council, Sir William Hodgson, and Ormskirk Division MP Sir (Sam) Thomas Rosbotham.
Just over a month later, in the weeks after the declaration of war on Germany was announced, the Lancashire County Mental Hospitals Committee announced that although work had been carried out during the year on the building of the colony, due to the war, the project had been suspended.
The committee had struggled to recruit female nurses for the new asylum and the committee expected to continue to look for recruits.
Post-war, with the National Health Service Act of 1946 coming into effect in July 1948, the plan for the mental asylum at Lathom Park was taken up by the Ministry of Health, with the land being transferred from the Lancashire Mental Hospitals Committee to the government.
As late as 1956, the Liverpool Hospitals Board was planning to take over the project to build the Mental Hospital at Lathom Park. But then, in December 1958, Pilkington Brothers of St Helens announced that they would be building a new laboratory at Lathom Park.
On New Years Eve 1958, at 11am, a bulldozer began clearing the ground for the state of the art laboratory which would see 500 employees working there, including 150 science graduates.