Place in the Country, A: Three Counties Asylum 1860-1999

“This book provides an excellent account of the... asylum over 140 years.” Chris Reynolds, Hertfordshire Genealogy

“The text describes how [the asylum] provided work for many locals, and gives a detailed account of the buildings themselves and of the staff and patients who populated them. The buildings included a chapel - St Luke's - and a nurses' home, and even an on-site brewery! Even without ancestors in the Three Counties area it is a useful book on the subject of asylum care.” Paul Gaskell, Hertfordshire Family Historian

“The book is absorbing to read… with extensive footnotes to every chapter, pertinent illustrations and a comprehensive index, this is a book I would recommend you read, to inform and educate, about this sensitive subject, and about the history of 'Fairfield' as a hospital, local employer and institution.” Jane Tunesi, Hertfordshire People

“This book gives a vivid, detailed account of the buildings, staff and patients who occupied the hospital. Its authors are well qualified to tell us this story, for they share backgrounds in social anthropology, occupational and family therapy and psychotherapy.” Ruth Jeavons, Herts Past & Present

“… comprehensively gives a history of, not only the Three Counties Asylum, but also of the changes of attitudes to and treatment of mental illness over the lifetime of the institution.” Janet Morris, CALH Review

In the mid-1850s, the counties of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire set about looking for a site for a new asylum to house their 'pauper lunatics'. Two hundred acres of farmland at Stotfold on the Hertfordshire—Bedfordshire border were purchased and in March 1860 the first patients were admitted to the new Three Counties Asylum (TCA).

The asylum was in operation for almost a century and a half and, as approaches to treating mental illness changed, so did TCA. When it first opened, in the wake of the 1845 Lunacy Act, it was with the intention of providing humane treatment to replace the harsh regimes in private madhouses, prisons and workhouses.

In time, drugs and other therapies were developed that were sometimes successful in alleviating symptoms. Finally, as the era of institutional care ended, Fairfield Hospital, as it came to be known, closed its doors in 1999.

This is a revised edition of A Place in the Country and focuses on the history of the Three Counties Asylum. It gives a detailed account of the buildings themselves and of the staff and patients who populated them. A vivid picture emerges of a community that in some respects was as self-contained as a village and provided work for many locals as well as an enclosed place for very vulnerable people.