Catalogue description PARKSIDE LUNATIC ASYLUM, later MENTAL HOSPITAL

This record is held by Cheshire Archives and Local Studies

Details of NHM/8
Reference: NHM/8
Title: PARKSIDE LUNATIC ASYLUM, later MENTAL HOSPITAL
Description: ADMINISTRATION: ASYLUM COMMITTEE: Minutes, correspondence, plans. VISITING COMMITTEE: Minutes; House Committee minutes; Annual reports; Misc reports etc; Papers of A C Procter, Clerk to the Committee. PARKSIDE HOSPITAL MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE: Minutes; Annual reports; Misc reports and publications. MEDICAL SUPERINTENDENT: Visitors report books; Journals; Letter books; Staff registers and records; Misc records. CLERK OF THE ASYLUM: Letter books; Mics registers, incl contracts for supplies; General ledgers; Patient maintenance ledgers; Farm and garden accounts; Building fund ledgers; Wages books; Statements, balance sheets etc. CHAPLAIN: Journals. CLERK OF WORKS: Plans; Mise files of specifications etc. PATIENT RECORDS: MEDICAL SUPERINTENDENT: Registers of admissions; Registers of discharges, removals and deaths; Registers of patients, alphabetical and misc; Medical registers; Pathology registers; Interment registers; Registers of mechanical restraint; Male head attendant's report books; "Letter books" [reports on individual patients]; Case books; Patients' friends address books.
Held by: Cheshire Archives and Local Studies, not available at The National Archives
Language: English
Creator:

Parkside County Asylum, 1871-c 1920

Parkside County Mental Hospital, c 1920-

Immediate source of acquisition:

Acc 1478,2729,2764, 3070, 3078, 3293, 4613, 5176, 5596, 5711

Subjects:
  • Chester, Cheshire
  • Health services
  • Mental health
Administrative / biographical background:

Parkside Hospital was built in 1868-1871 as a County Lunatic Asylum for the accommodation of pauper lunatics, because the County asylum at Upton had insufficient accommodation. The Court of Quarter Sessions appointed a Committee in 1865 to advise on the need for a new asylum, then to select a site and then to erect an asylum in the north of the County. The Asylum was erected under the supervision and to the plans of Robert Griffiths, architect.

 

The building was originally designed to accommodate 700 patients, but, as a result of extensive new building works, including an isolation hospital (1896), admission hospital (1905), "Uplands" for private patients (1913) and a major new group of villas in 1938, the total accommodation rose to over 1500.

 

The name was changed from County Asylum to County Mental Hospital c1920.

 

The asylum was supervised by a Visiting Committee of Justices, appointed by the Court of Quarter Sessions from 1871 until 1889 when the County Council took over responsibility for appointing the Committee of Visitors. The Committee also included representatives of the County Boroughs of Stockport and Wallasey. The minutes of this Committee before 1894 are lost, but some annual reports survive both in the series of printed reports (CCC 2/11/1-15) and in the relevant minute books of the County Council.

 

Some members of the Committee of Visitors were appointed to the House Committee which exercised more day-to-day supervision of the work of the asylum. The records of this committee are missing before 1917.

 

With the introduction of the National Health Service in 1948, management was transferred to a Hospital Management Committee, under the overall control of the Manchester Regional Hospital Board. In 1970 the Parkside HMC was merged with the Macclesfield and District Group HMC to form the East Cheshire Hospital Management Committee (see NHM 10).

 

After the further NHS reforms in 1982, Parkside became a part of Macclesfield Health Authority.

 

The senior officer in charge of the asylum was the Medical Superintendent, assisted by a clerk and a finance officer as well as the medical and nursing staff.

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