Catalogue description REPROVISION OF GRAYLINGWELL HOSPITAL, CHICHESTER

This section of the catalogue includes papers associated with the reprovision and closure of Graylingwell Hospital, Chichester. The papers concern the involvement of West Sussex County Council in the final ten years of the working life of the hospital, and therefore reflect that period from a County Council perspective. The papers chart work associated with the reprovision and closure of the long-stay wards in particular, as it became the responsibility of the County Council to develop new accommodation arrangements (referred to in the documents as the Supported Housing and Care Service) for a number of patients on those wards. The papers also chart the County Council's involvement with the range of project groups and boards established by the NHS in West Sussex to oversee the overall reprovision and closure programme.

West Sussex Record Office holds a comprehensive collection of records relating to the development and operation of Graylingwell Hospital through to the 1960s. These include Construction Reports; various Committee Minutes and Reports; Contract Books; Finance Ledgers; Registers of Patients (1897-1960); Registers of Staff, including Nursing Staff; and a number of miscellaneous items including printed books and pamphlets, Graylingwell War Hospital 1916-1922, and programmes for entertainments and other activities (1897-1912). It should be noted that all records pertaining to patients are subject to a 100 year closure.

Chichester District Museum (29 Little London, Chichester PO19 1PB) holds a number of items, including a photographic record made of the site and much of its contents in 2001.

In a series of articles in 1988 for 'West Sussex History', the journal and newsletter of the West Sussex Archive Society, Barone Hopper wrote about The lands at Graylingwell. The articles - in Journals 39-41 - cover the medieval and later history of the site, topography, and estate plans. Each of the articles has a comprehensive range of source material for further reference. Copies are held by the Record Office.

The Chichester Observer newspaper is a rich source of material. During the final years of Graylingwell Hospital, a number of articles referred back to the hospital in either its early years, or to the 1950s and 1960s when the hospital was well-known internationally for its pioneering work in medical research.

Two articles in 2002 in 'Chichester History', the journal of the Chichester Local History Society, reflect on the final years of the hospital. The 2002 journal and other issues are available on the open shelves of the Record Office.

An overview of the history of Graylingwell Hospital

Graylingwell Hospital, the psychiatric hospital for the western end of West Sussex, opened in 1897 and closed in 2001. As the West Sussex County Asylum, it was Sir Arthur Blomfield's only design for a mental hospital and it was built between 1894-97. It took as patients the overflow from St Francis Hospital, Haywards Heath, West Sussex. Extra buildings were added in 1901-02, bringing the capacity up to 750; three further blocks and a nurses' home were added in 1931-33 providing total hospital accommodation of 1045 beds by 1934. The contract for the 1890s buildings went to James Longley & Co of Crawley for £114,669.

The hospital was self-sufficient until the end of the 1950s, with a water tower, generator for electricity, and food supplies produced on its own 60-acre market gardens. Two farms (Graylingwell Farm and St. Martin's Farm) supplied meat, milk, vegetables and flowers. The farm stock was auctioned off on 25th March 1957. The stock included 100 dairy shorthorns (one of which had held a world record for milk yield), pigs, sheep and poultry. The farmhouse at Graylingwell Farm predates the hospital, having been built in the early 18th century. The farmhouse still exists and is currently boarded up (2004). In its later years it was used as the base for a psychiatric day hospital. The building is Grade 2 listed and was at one time lived in by the Sewell family Anna, of Black Beauty fame.

The hospital grounds benefited from a wide range of specimen trees donated from the Batsford Estate and planted in the 1890s and the start of the twentieth century. The trees include a magnificent Cedar of Lebanon dating from 1900 (outside the chapel), and a Spanish cork oak (on the eastern side of the main drive). The grounds were maintained by staff and patients up to the closure.

Patients at the hospital earned tokens, instead of money, for work in the hospital grounds. The tokens were kept in the strong room in the Clerk's Office near the front entrance to the hospital. Before decimalisation in 1971, plastic tokens were colour-coded according to denomination: yellow = 3d, green = 6d, purple = 9d, beige = 1/-, pink = 1/6, black = 2/-, grey = 2/6, orange = 5/-. 'Graylingwell Hospital Chichester' was printed around the rim of the reverse. The tokens were used to buy cigarettes and sweets in the hospital shop. The token system was eventually replaced by (real) money. A branch of Lloyds Bank at the hospital was opened and patients were encouraged to open their own bank accounts there. A set of the tokens is held by Chichester District Museum, 29 Little London, Chichester PO19 1PB.

During the First World War, the (civilian) patients were moved to other hospitals as Graylingwell was designated as one of 15 psychiatric hospitals to receive war casualties. The casualties came straight from the Western Front, via train from Dover and convoy of all available vehicles, including the hospital's own four ambulances. Harold Kidd, the Medical Superintendent, was made an honorary Colonel for the duration of this period. All the wards were renamed; those on the female (east) side of the hospital prefixed with 'Queen's' and those on the male (west) side with 'King's'. Amberley 1 ward, for example, became King's A1. The first military patients arrived on 24th March 1915, and the last left in 1919 to the sound of the Last Post being played outside the front entrance of the hospital. During the Second World War the Summersdale block was annexed for military use and amongst other work it provided an acute battle neurosis unit for front-line casualties. Further information is available in W. Sargant, The Unquiet Mind: the autobiography of a physician in psychological medicine Heinemann, 1967.

The Main Hall was used for a wide range of social activities and entertainments. Films used to be shown to patients and staff. The film projection equipment (two Gaumont-Kazee cinema projectors with Rank audio visual rectifiers) was housed behind the central section of the back wall. At the west end of the hall was a stage, complete with orchestra pit and proscenium arch.

A survey of the architectural features of Graylingwell Hospital was undertaken in September 1992 by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (ref. NBR 101269). The report, written by Harriet Richardson, noted that Graylingwell is a 'good example of a county asylum built at the end of the 19th century on the echelon plan.'

In 1997, the then Department of National Heritage was asked to consider the listing of buildings at the hospital. Having carefully considered all the available evidence, it was the decision of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, in May 1998, that the buildings did not merit statutory listing within the terms of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. Shortly after the hospital finally closed in 2001, however, it was announced that the 'airing courts' - where patients used to walk in the grounds immediately outside the hospital wards - would in fact be listed.

Graylingwell Hospital celebrated its centenary in 1997. Barone (Barry) Hopper, one-time psychiatric social worker at the hospital, produced an illustrated booklet entitled 100 Years of Sanctuary: Graylingwell Hospital 1897-1997, A Social History. The booklet accompanied a video-tape film of the same title. Copies of both are held at West Sussex Record Office and at Chichester District Museum. Also in 1997, there were centenary celebrations including an exhibition in the District Museum featuring the original plans and drawings, along with soil samples taken at the time of the building of the main block. At the hospital itself, staff produced a self-guided 'tree walk' around the grounds.

The last patients left Graylingwell Hospital in May 2001. New NHS facilities in Chichester, Midhurst, Bognor Regis, and Worthing were developed, some financed through the Private Finance Initiative, and others through NHS/public sector finance. A number of patients moved to the Supported Housing and Care Service developed by a partnership consisting of Hyde Housing Association, Sussex Oakleaf Housing Association and West Sussex County Council. The remaining contents of the hospital were sold at auction on 7th June 2001, and the final staff left the buildings in September 2001. The empty buildings are now maintained by NHS Estates, pending new uses being identified and agreed.

WDS/SS16/1/17 is Voices of Change, written by Phil Hewitt in 2001. This book was published privately by Sussex Weald and Downs NHS Trust, shortly before the demise of the Trust on 31st March 2002. Following further organisational change in the NHS, the Trust was replaced by the West Sussex Health and Social Care NHS Trust. This new Trust has taken over the management of all the new NHS facilities developed as a result of the closure of Graylingwell