Harvest Festival too was quite an occasion. On normal Sundays
the services were held in the ballroom just in front of the balcony using choir stalls, a harmonium powerful enough to cope
with 600 lusty voices, a lectern and a pulpit all portable. These were set up in front of the balcony arches which gave it
the semblance of a church, but as yet there was no altar.
At Harvest Festival the whole area was transformed with an
enormous display provided jointly by the farm bailiff and the head gardener with huge palm trees borrowed from the centre,
branches of apple trees laden with crabapples, every conceivable fruit, flower, and vegetable. A magnificent Harvest Sheaf
made in bread by the baker was the show stopping centre-piece.
You enter the ballroom from the admin building corridor and
the first sight of it is breathtaking. An absolute architectural treat with high ceilings, stained glass, ornamental carvings
and six ornate fireplaces.
The atmosphere is tangibly lighter in the echoing expanse
and you can envisage the dances and performances when male and female patients were permitted to socialise together in something
approaching normality.
It reminds you that in the midst of the somewhat misguided
care of the past, there was at least an original intention to improve the lives of the poor inhabitants by constucting such
a magnificent ballroom.
Very sad to see, that here too, rainwater is once again
damaging the structure unchecked.
