# Hortham Idiot Colony/Hospital, A brief History.



## mcspringzy

Hortham, was the first institution to be functionally designed and built as a complete Colony, and designed to care for just over 600 patients.

Under the Mental Health Act 1913 Section 38, Bristol City Council decided to acquire land and build an institution for the care of the mentally handicapped which was to become Hortham Idiot Colony

The search for a suitable site took a while, because of WW1 going on.
In 1924, after a long review of various land plots, a 126 acre site was choosen. It was purchased for the some of £4,788 and was essentially agricultural land.

During construction, various roman artifacts were found, some of which are displayed in Bristol City Museum

The architects were W.S Skinner and sons, and the main contractor H.Bell and sons. Work started on 14th May 1929 to the total cost of £215,000. The contracter completed the work by May 1931, and the Colony was handed over to the Bristol Corporation, where the furnishing and equipping of the buildings then followed. Six months later, the first patients were admited.

April 29th 1933, Hortham officially opened its doors.

Hortham has been commonly misconcepted as a "Mental Institute for Children", it had patients off all ages, included the famous MurdererJohn Straffen (Britains longest serving prisoner). 



> Hortham was an "open" colony which specialised in training mentally defective offenders for resettlement in the community



Hortham finally scaled down its work in 1988 and finally closed its doors in late 1991. Since then was left derelict, during the 90's it was the playground of Travellers for a few years, till they had stolen everything of any value there, cut bake and left. And from then on fell pray to vandals and arsonists. Since 1998 various planning applications were submitted but all were denied, for what reason is unknown. But in 2005 one from Barret / Taylor Woodrow was submitted after all they did own the land. They won, which suprised everyone as nearly all of the local residents to Hortham Hospital objected. And in 2006, demolition work started courtesy of Bath Demolition, during which, they "accidentally" cut down various trees with Tree Preservation orders on. But work was slowed down because they discovered Slow Worms and Bats nesting. They also discovered Asbestos which heeded there attemps abit. *By the end of 2006, all buildings were reportedly gone.* Crappy over priced houses have since been built on the "foundations" of the former hospital. 
Anyway, heres the pictures.


*Then & Now*






Aerial view from the late 30's.





A fairly recent "birds eye view" from maps.live.com





A picture of Admin taking around 1931 after work completed.





Admin 2006 _Picture is Funkymonkeys, hope you dont mind me borrowing it_





Some females playing Netball





A near enough shot, you get the idea





Another simalar shot.

(I didnt want to use to many of other peoples pictures, plus, I lost hundreds of original exploration pictures because of a poor harddrive)





A wards day room





Not quite the same, but you get the idea.





Front gates, during its opening.







A shot from the right of the gates, 2006. (Please excuse the gray bit at the bottom, thats what damage the broken harddrive did)





Main Hall, 1930.





Main Hall, feb 2006.

Thats it really as far as my pictures go, I really dont have many left. Ill put a few more of Hortham in its old days up.





Patients doing Laundry






One of the medical hut things built during WW2




One last of the older shots, this is the Hortham Cricket team outside there cricket hut thing.





Cricket hut more recently.


Well, I've been typing, resizing, searching and moving for the last twos hours for this  Have fun, mcspringzy.

*All of the older images were used courtesy of Glenside Museum. The rest are my own unless otherwise stated.*


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## King Al

*Re: Hortham Idiot Colony/Hospital, A breif History.*

Fantastic report mate, Love the old pics compared with the new, that day room looks so strange of all the "day rooms" that I have marched through I find it hard to imagine that any of them looked like that


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## Foxylady

*Re: Hortham Idiot Colony/Hospital, A breif History.*

Absolutely brill report. Well done mate, that must have taken some effort to get the pics, etc, together. Shame about your hard drive. 
Interesting to see the layout is pretty much the same. Love the old cricket pavillion. 

Cheers Mac.  How ya doing, btw? Still in the 'Gateway to the South-West'?


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## krela

*Re: Hortham Idiot Colony/Hospital, A breif History.*



Foxylady said:


> Interesting to see the layout is pretty much the same. Love the old cricket pavillion.



*Was* pretty much the same. The whole place was demolished in december 2006.


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## Foxylady

*Re: Hortham Idiot Colony/Hospital, A breif History.*



krela said:


> *Was* pretty much the same. The whole place was demolished in december 2006.



Ah, sorry about that...must've misread it. I thought the second map was where the new housing had been constructed. I thought it was a bit too sympathetic for developers!


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## krela

*Re: Hortham Idiot Colony/Hospital, A breif History.*

Alas no, Hortham is no more than a pile of rubble in some landfill site now


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## smileysal

This place looked gorgeous when it was the opening ceremony, love all the then and now pics. Especially as you can see how lovely it was and then all left derelict. Love the main hall, that looks great when the place was open. 

Sorry about your hard drive, seems most of us are having probs with the pc's at the moment 

Cheers,

 Sal


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## Lightbuoy

Top stuff MC 

The main hall is a different style -almost art nouveu in shape. Reminds me of the shape of those old Gypsy Caravans. Shame it's all gone. Well done to you and FunkeyMonkey for getting some pics as a record of this now long gone Hospital. Thanks again matey 

Lb


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## Mr Sam

NICE my mate that way was tempting me over about a year ago as it hadnt been explored or we couldnt find any reports on it back then


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## krela

Lightbuoy said:


> Top stuff MC
> 
> The main hall is a different style -almost art nouveu in shape. Reminds me of the shape of those old Gypsy Caravans. Shame it's all gone. Well done to you and FunkeyMonkey for getting some pics as a record of this now long gone Hospital. Thanks again matey



Well it was built from 1929-1931! Much later than the victorian asylums.



Mr Sam said:


> NICE my mate that way was tempting me over about a year ago as it hadnt been explored or we couldnt find any reports on it back then



I first posted this place up in early 2005. Not sure where you must have been looking


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## krela

I'm not sure how useful these are but some of my photos can be found here and here.


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## mcspringzy

Thanks everyone for the possitive comments 



krela said:


> I'm not sure how useful these are but some of my photos can be found here and here.



I tried looking for your pictures, because knew you had a load. But couldnt find hortham on the menu on the infiltration bit.









I've got that leaflet in my loft, I picked it up about 2 weeks before the Main Hall came down.


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## Pete

Great stuff McSpringzy, 

Very nice to see the old photos of the site, and it is a great shame so many images of yours were lost on the hard drive - theres a lot to be said for backing up stuff. 

I'm not 100% sure about this statement:


mcspringzy said:


> Hortham, was the first institution to be functionally designed and built as a complete Colony.


I've seen it said elsewhere, but being a bit of an anorak/purist i tend to disbelieve this kind of statement - in fact there are a handful of earlier colonies opened during the preceding 20 years. Just me picking at things...

A really nice write up/history otherwise!

Pete


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## mcspringzy

*Re: Hortham Idiot Colony/Hospital, A breif History.*



Foxylady said:


> Cheers Mac.  How ya doing, btw? Still in the 'Gateway to the South-West'?



Yeah, im still here! Are you? And im alright thanks, yourself?





Pete C said:


> I've seen it said elsewhere, but being a bit of an anorak/purist i tend to disbelieve this kind of statement - in fact there are a handful of earlier colonies opened during the preceding 20 years. Just me picking at things...




I was in disbelief when I read that too, but I read it previously in the Hortham Hospital Golden Anniversary book.


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## mr_bones

Thanks for that, interesting little writeup. I like the design of the hall - very unusual, especially with its curved stage area that follows the shape of the rest of the room.


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## District12

Hey there,

I'm planning a trip to this neck of the woods shortly - does anybody know he current status of Hortham? Much left to see?

Ta.


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## krela

District12 said:


> Hey there,
> 
> I'm planning a trip to this neck of the woods shortly - does anybody know he current status of Hortham? Much left to see?
> 
> Ta.



Yeah, there's hundreds of barratts boxes to see.

(It was demolished almost 2 years ago now).


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## District12

Darn shame...ok...next!

cheers guys.


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## silverstealth

exceptional report, love the old pictures.


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## nursepayne

The origional images are superb, its great to be able to compare them to how it looks now.


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## funkymonkey

only just found this, wow!

thank for sharing this McS, and yeah, no worries with using my pic.

Just a shame its all gone now. Went along the other day to have a look at the new boxes......... and no reference except in name to the hospital.

another piece of bristols history gone forever, in the face of 'progress'


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## mcspringzy

Well, 




Dont say theres nothing left!



Because, if you know the area, there are a few tiny weeny buildings left, out the very back corner, just off of the lane running along side "hortham"

I believe they were farm type buildings with a bungalow, they seem to have been forgotten about to the devlopers.


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## krela

mcspringzy said:


> Well,
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dont say theres nothing left!
> 
> 
> 
> Because, if you know the area, there are a few tiny weeny buildings left, out the very back corner, just off of the lane running along side "hortham"
> 
> I believe they were farm type buildings with a bungalow, they seem to have been forgotten about to the devlopers.



Strange, they were inhabited shortly before the developers moved in.

Hortham is being built in phases mind, so it could be that they're part of a future development?


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## Flaxington

krela said:


> Strange, they were inhabited shortly before the developers moved in.
> 
> Hortham is being built in phases mind, so it could be that they're part of a future development?



they may have been a rehab unit for patients moving back into the community


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## krela

Kirkbride said:


> they may have been a rehab unit for patients moving back into the community



At one point yeah, but they weren't when I saw them inhabited.


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## Flaxington

krela said:


> At one point yeah, but they weren't when I saw them inhabited.



maybe staff houses?


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## funkymonkey

May well have been staff houses, although most of those were towards the north of the site.

Last time i checked the bottom corner looked like a pikey breakers yard. will have to pop down and a have a look. Will also try and get some pics of the new development. It'll break your hearts!


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## OSPA

They wouldn't get away with calling it an idiot colony it todays pc society! Great pics though mate!


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## BigLoada

Interesting to see the contrast between the old and new photos. Also, I find it fascinating that the word Idiot had a different meaning back then, or rather was used in that way. I was looking at my old 19th century map of Morpeth town in Northumberland and St Georges hospital was labelled Lunatic Asylum. I find it interesting how the useage of words change in that we'd never get away with saying lunatic asylum now but back then it was just the normal everyday language.

Sorry for rambling, blame the MceWans Export...great photos and explore mate


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## Pete

*Another rant about 'Idiot Colony'*



OSPA said:


> They wouldn't get away with calling it an idiot colony it todays pc society!



Ok, i was trying to stop myself commenting on the whole 'idiot colony' thing again, but the above post made it impossible for me to resist!

Despite researching the subject in considerable depth i have NEVER found any primary evidence to substantiate that the term 'Idiot colony' was used officially in the UK for Hortham or other institutions.

Firstly, the Idiot is anachronistic. The term 'idiot' as with imbecile or feeble-minded were terms used medically to denote differing grades of learning disabilities, but (with the exception of feeble-minded) by 1900 had become largely moribund in such use in favour of mental deficiency grading. This was set in statute by the mental deficiency act 1913 after which time the terms idiot and imbecile were wholly superceded in law. Given that the vast majority of colonies were developed from the late 1920's onward it is implausable that what was seen as a modern concept would saddle itself with such an archaic term. It didn't - in every case found so far, such colonies were named on of the following:
'colony for the mentally defective'
'mental deficiency colony'
'industrial colony'
'farm colony'
or simply just 'colony'
otherwise they could be known as certified instutuions
Even the earliest colonies developed before WWI at Sandlebridge, Great Barr, Prudhoe and Monyhull appear to give no reference to the term 'Idiot Colony' in contemporary documentation.

Secondly, even if it were still in use the term 'Idiot' largely inaccurate for the colonies. All (bar a handful of certified institutions) were occupied solely or predominantly by high or middle grade defectives. Idiots were classed as low grade defectives and required substatial or total care from others, usually staff or higher grade colonists.Where low grade villas existed they formed a small proportion of the total population. To maintain an colony predominantly of 'Idiots' would defeat the whole concept of self sufficiency with which such institutions were built. 

In answer to the above quote, i believe it is, ironically todays pc society that has manufactured the term and applied it in a fake-historical sense. The fact that it is seemingly understood to be accurate and is continuing to proliferate through the internet is what infuriates me (perhaps unnecessarily!), and is why i keep writing posts like this. That said, if anyone can find an original source of evidence for the term idiot colony i will shut my trap!

Pete


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## BigLoada

Pete said:


> Ok, i was trying to stop myself commenting on the whole 'idiot colony' thing again, but the above post made it impossible for me to resist!
> 
> Despite researching the subject in considerable depth i have NEVER found any primary evidence to substantiate that the term 'Idiot colony' was used officially in the UK for Hortham or other institutions.
> 
> Firstly, the Idiot is anachronistic. The term 'idiot' as with imbecile or feeble-minded were terms used medically to denote differing grades of learning disabilities, but (with the exception of feeble-minded) by 1900 had become largely moribund in such use in favour of mental deficiency grading. This was set in statute by the mental deficiency act 1913 after which time the terms idiot and imbecile were wholly superceded in law. Given that the vast majority of colonies were developed from the late 1920's onward it is implausable that what was seen as a modern concept would saddle itself with such an archaic term. It didn't - in every case found so far, such colonies were named on of the following:
> 'colony for the mentally defective'
> 'mental deficiency colony'
> 'industrial colony'
> 'farm colony'
> or simply just 'colony'
> otherwise they could be known as certified instutuions
> Even the earliest colonies developed before WWI at Sandlebridge, Great Barr, Prudhoe and Monyhull appear to give no reference to the term 'Idiot Colony' in contemporary documentation.
> 
> Secondly, even if it were still in use the term 'Idiot' largely inaccurate for the colonies. All (bar a handful of certified institutions) were occupied solely or predominantly by high or middle grade defectives. Idiots were classed as low grade defectives and required substatial or total care from others, usually staff or higher grade colonists.Where low grade villas existed they formed a small proportion of the total population. To maintain an colony predominantly of 'Idiots' would defeat the whole concept of self sufficiency with which such institutions were built.
> 
> In answer to the above quote, i believe it is, ironically todays pc society that has manufactured the term and applied it in a fake-historical sense. The fact that it is seemingly understood to be accurate and is continuing to proliferate through the internet is what infuriates me (perhaps unnecessarily!), and is why i keep writing posts like this. That said, if anyone can find an original source of evidence for the term idiot colony i will shut my trap!
> 
> Pete




Thanks Pete. Although I have no interest inexploring hospitals/asylums, I do have a very keen interest in mental health issues and was very interested to read what you have said.


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## OSPA

Pete said:


> Ok, i was trying to stop myself commenting on the whole 'idiot colony' thing again, but the above post made it impossible for me to resist!
> 
> Despite researching the subject in considerable depth i have NEVER found any primary evidence to substantiate that the term 'Idiot colony' was used officially in the UK for Hortham or other institutions.
> 
> Firstly, the Idiot is anachronistic. The term 'idiot' as with imbecile or feeble-minded were terms used medically to denote differing grades of learning disabilities, but (with the exception of feeble-minded) by 1900 had become largely moribund in such use in favour of mental deficiency grading. This was set in statute by the mental deficiency act 1913 after which time the terms idiot and imbecile were wholly superceded in law. Given that the vast majority of colonies were developed from the late 1920's onward it is implausable that what was seen as a modern concept would saddle itself with such an archaic term. It didn't - in every case found so far, such colonies were named on of the following:
> 'colony for the mentally defective'
> 'mental deficiency colony'
> 'industrial colony'
> 'farm colony'
> or simply just 'colony'
> otherwise they could be known as certified instutuions
> Even the earliest colonies developed before WWI at Sandlebridge, Great Barr, Prudhoe and Monyhull appear to give no reference to the term 'Idiot Colony' in contemporary documentation.
> 
> Secondly, even if it were still in use the term 'Idiot' largely inaccurate for the colonies. All (bar a handful of certified institutions) were occupied solely or predominantly by high or middle grade defectives. Idiots were classed as low grade defectives and required substatial or total care from others, usually staff or higher grade colonists.Where low grade villas existed they formed a small proportion of the total population. To maintain an colony predominantly of 'Idiots' would defeat the whole concept of self sufficiency with which such institutions were built.
> 
> In answer to the above quote, i believe it is, ironically todays pc society that has manufactured the term and applied it in a fake-historical sense. The fact that it is seemingly understood to be accurate and is continuing to proliferate through the internet is what infuriates me (perhaps unnecessarily!), and is why i keep writing posts like this. That said, if anyone can find an original source of evidence for the term idiot colony i will shut my trap!
> 
> Pete



Very fair point Pete, its obviously something you know a lot about. Although, I think what I was trying to say was that it was a derogatory term.


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## mcspringzy

In all honesty, I cant actually remember if I've seen it written anywhere.


When I first found out about Hortham, I found it on nobodythere.co.uk and they had listed it as Hospital.

All the Documents, though they are from later sources, use Hortham Hospital.



Cheers Pete for that info though, very interesting.


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