High Royds from the outside.

I recently visited my local Mental Hospital High Royds, it has been developed into houses and flats, it is still ongoing. Try as I might to get access to the undeveloped parts, it's just about impossible, so that's where I will leave it.
Walking around the area I found it very peaceful and quiet, not at all scary or spooky, when you think of the people who were sent there it makes you wonder, did the therapies work, did they stay indefinitely. There is a graveyard and church so I'm assuming a lot of the inmates died in the asylum. There is book written by local author and photographer Mark Davis, I was given this book by a close friend when she knew the subject of my final year at college.

Another book by the same author

So here is a selection of photos with my crap camera and my friends phone camera, just really to get the feel of the place, may do a lino cut of one of the images.

So now onto researching artists who were either insane or for one reason or another lived in an asylum. So far Camille Claudel, Richard Dadd and Adolf Wolfli.

A link to one of my pinterest accounts. https://www.pinterest.co.uk/karenann1957hot/insane-artists/

A film to watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygIMIOFxfdQ

Great article

Here is a link to an article about this woman because of her bravery she effected change in Asylums in the US
 http://en.newsner.com/reporter-was-locked-in-mental-hospital-for-10-days-when-her-true-identity-was-revealed-the-doctors-were-shocked/about/gender-en

Mental Health Museum Wakefield

http://www.southwestyorkshire.nhs.uk/quality-innovation/mental-health-museum/visit-us/

I visited this small but so interesting museum yesterday, the young woman who worked there was so informative and helpful, I took loads of photos of the exhibits, there was a padded cell and an autopsy table, all quite macabre but then I like that. As you can see in the photos there are a lot of keys, I think keys are going to feature in my work quite a lot. Some of the drawers had drawing of brains in them. I picked up a book to look at and a massive moth flew off it, I had disturbed it's sleep, anyway here are some of the photos.

This Victorian uniform give you the impression of the wearer being very stern, quite a few keys on that chain.

This is the peephole from the inside of the padded cell door, not much light would get in, hard to imagine how terrifying it must be to be in a straight jacket, inside a padded room with no light.

Some of the electric therapy machines

Autopsy Table

Another machine

Some sort of restraint that looks like it belongs on a horse

Visiting Asylums

Well finding abandoned asylums to visit is not proving to be very fruitful, but I will not give up.
So far there is Storths Hall in Huddersfield, nearly falling down and too dangerous, so had to put that one to bed.
The first one I'm going to visit is the Mental Health Museum in Wakefield formally known as Fieldhead  Hospital, obviously High Royds is five minutes away but wanted to explore other areas.

Google is a funny old thing, all sorts of options come when you type abandoned asylums/mental hospitals into the search box, scary, haunted, spooky and creepiest places to visit. Of course my agenda is to create something spooky and ghostly, I need ideas and material to feed my dark soul.
So it's a start at least and I did come across some photos that had wax poured over them, this technique is called Encaustic and I will be exploring it further, I think you see my point with this example.

Willard Suitcases-Wonderfully interesting and sad

http://willardsuitcases.photoshelter.com/gallery-list

http://www.willardsuitcases.com/

Black Daisy

Well here we are, a mosaic with a black daisy motif incorporated in the design of the flouring of High Royds Hospital Menston, What does it signify, why does the road/path in front of the entrance wind instead of being straight, all these questions will be answered soon. As I delve into the Victorian world of Asylums, why were the women institutionalised, many reasons I'm sure, what therapies were used, so much to research. Just these two subjects were brought to my attention by a local archivist whom I met just yesterday, I really would have loved to have downloaded the wealth of knowledge from that interesting brain.

Photo by Mark Davis High Royds Historian and author