Originally known as The Stotfold Three Counties Asylum, building of the hospital commenced in 1856 on a 253-acre site between Letchworth, Arlesey and Stotfold.

The new hospital was to replace the Bedford Lunatic Asylum in Ampthill Road in Bedford, which had been built in 1812. The Fairfield Hospital was designed by architect George Fowler Jones with the longest corridor in Britain, at half a mile long. The hospital opened on 8 March 1860 with the transfer of 6 male and 6 female patients from Bedford Lunatic Asylum, and catered for patients from Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Huntingdonshire. The Asylum had its own chapel, farm, laundry, railway station and fire brigade.

By 1861 the number of patients had expanded to 460, with 248 female and 212 male patients. At this time the asylum employed about 256 local people from the surrounding villages, including 66 men in its garden and small farm, where produce for the asylum's kitchen was grown, and 33 women in the laundry and wash house. The Chapel and cemetery were added in 1879, with the East stained-glass window being added in 1920 in memory of the asylum's staff and former inmates who lost their lives in the First World War of 1914-1918. During and after that War the asylum treated male and female patients suffering from shell shock.

The Mental Treatment Act of 1930 changed the use of the term 'Asylum' to 'Hospital', so The Three Counties Asylum became known as The Three Counties Hospital.

In 1948 The Three Counties Hospital became part of the National Health Service, and, in 1960, it was renamed Fairfield Hospital.

In 1981 the Conservative Government published its 'Care in the Community' report. Its aim was a more liberal way of helping people with mental health problems, by removing them from impersonal, often Victorian institutions, such as Fairfield Hospital, and caring for them in their own homes.

This Act lead to the closure of many psychiatric hospitals including Fairfield Hospital, which finally closed in 1999.

The whole redevelopment of the hospital site and grounds now constitutes a village called Fairfield Park, which became a civil parish in 2013.

We visited on the sunny spring day of April 12th 2015.

Fairfield Park
Hitchin
Bedfordshire
SG5 4FS