Hill End Mental Asylum opened in 1900 and closed
in 1995. The area is now mainly park land with the old hospital buildings converted into apartments and other areas used for
new housing. The stigma of it's former use and with aparent pressure from residents the whole area is now known as Highfields
Park.
During World War II St Bartholomews Hospital was relocated
to Hill End to treat the war wounded and Londoners injured during the Blitz. The battle of Dunkirk saw the hospital treat
over 600 casualties in one week. Eventually St Bartholomews relocated back to London in 1961.
In it's day the Asylum was completly self sufficient
with its own farms, kitchen gardens and orchards. It even had its own railway line within the grounds and a station of which
the platform still remains today.
Out of the way of the main Hospital/Asylum is the burial ground
for deceased patients and also a few staff members. It seems strange that some staff were buried along side patients but maybe
they had no family or considered the Hospital to be their true home. The patients were buried in unmarked graves with only
cast iron plot markers indicating their presence. The ground was also used for the patients of nearby Cell Barnes Hospital
which opened in 1933 and was situated to the south of todays park land. Cell Barnes closed in 1998 presumably another casualty of
the Mental Health reforms and the new "care in the community" policies.
Today the Garden Of Rest is commemorated with a
wooden arch, information boards, a bench and a contrete slab with the grave markers attached. A few headstones remain which
are thought to belong to the very earlest patients, maybe the result of a short lived policy to mark each individual grave.
As in this day and age, nothing is sacred, and the metal thiefs have been to work stealing some grave markers for their
meager scrap value.
The photos below were taken on a wet dreary Sunday in
November 2014.
