MemberWarlingham in Surrey, just within the M25 London orbital motorway, but essentially in the countryside.
Great Park is a superb gated community of 85 acres of woodland/grassland, that for almost 100 years was a mental asylum (1902 - 2000) pioneering some frightful treatments.
A forbidding place, at the forefront of psychiatric drug research, Electro Convulsive therapy, and the earliest operations for Frontal Lobotomy.
All three procedures drove already desperately disturbed people completely insane.
In the year 2000 it was demolished and a beautiful residential development was constructed.
Just Heavenly.
Behind the park is a dense wood, that used to be the mental hospital cemetery between 1903 and 1960.
The trees which were cleared away to create the cemetery have taken over once again, and all the evidence you can see is an occasional numbered ceramic stake identifying the resting place of the unfortunate patient.
Bear in mind that many of these patients were unwanted young girls, who had unwanted pregnancies, who were conveniently disposed of here, sometimes for life!
Some others were 'family misfits.'
Not all families had a benign attitude to their children, and could turn a 'difficult' (ie normal) child into a disturbed scapegoat.
If you read Scottish Psychiatrist R.D. Laing, he explains how the the actual mental illness (schizophrenia) frequently resides in the parents, and other siblings, not the problem child at all.
(It might be worth looking at that in a different post. Very 'off topic' I know, but this forum is called 'General Chat.')
The cemetery gates are opened just one day a year, and when I ducked and dived between the dense foliage I only managed to find one grave - amongst the stake markers.
Most patients just got a number.
All so sad.
But now, the park is beautiful.
(Footnote - if you need any emotional help, give the psychiatrist a wide birth, and find yourself a really good psychotherapist.
Just my own personal view - having had experience of both.
Trick-cyclists belong in a fairground.
I am speaking to you as an ex-nutter.
Some of my mates question the "ex" bit.)
