The Four Hospitals of the West Riding General Asylums Committee, later known as the Mental Hospitals Board.
1818 Stanley Royd
1872 Wadsley
1888 High Royds
1904 Storthes Hall
STANLEY ROYD
The building was necessary to care for the treatment and care of the insane poor, and work began on it in
1816. The main builders were John Robson, John Billinton and William Pockrin - all from Wakefield. Work was completed and
the hospital occupied by the 23rd of November 1818. The eventual cost of the building work was £23,000 being £7,000 more than
the contracted price. The total cost was shown in the records as £36,448. 4s. 9¼d.
The building stood in an area of 25 acres. For privacy the grounds were surrounded by plantation in either
Wakefield or Stanley to be quiet, peaceful and secluded. It was a much needed hospital for in the early part of the 19th century
very little was available by way of treatment for mental illness. Before the opening of this asylum, sufferers were incarcerated
in prisons, workhouses or in their own homes at none of which treatment was available except for purging, bleeding or mechanical
restraint.
Some of records of mechanical restraint make horrific reading. There was a case of a James Norris who, at
Bethlem Hospital, London, was chained for several years to a vertical bar fixed to a wall, able only to slide in his chains
from a sitting to a standing position. Records tell at Wakefield of a woman patient admitted from Barnsley Workhouse where
she had been chained in a cell for no less than 36 years.
Therefore there was the need for a hospital which would care for the people in need of treatment for mental
disorders. So Stanley played its part in the beginning of better treatment for the unfortunate.
In 1859 the water supply to the asylum gave concern. In the early days the supply had been from 'springs'
and, for domestic purposes, collected from the roofs of the buildings. Seasonal failure of the springs caused concern and
at these times water was brought direct from the River Calder in water wagons until the springs once again ran freely.
It is interesting to note that in evidence given to a commission of inquiry in 1866 on the pollution of
the River Calder, it was established that in 1818 roach, perch and other fish abounded, As late as 1826 a stone thrown into
the river could be seen at seven or eight feet deep.
The prospectus for the proposed Wakefield Waterworks Company of 1836 proposed that 'water
superior in purity to any spring at present under consideration, and sufficient in quantity to supply the largest City in
Europe should be obtained from a point about 4 miles below the Wakefield Chantry Bridge.' That point was in the ferry area.
The Wakefield Waterworks Company is shown on an 1850 plan to be behind the Stanley Ferry pits.
A road or footpath was used by the villagers of Stanley for many years on which they carried their dead
from Stanley to Wakefield Parish Church burial ground which was in The Springs. This roadway ran in a line to the east of
Ouchthorpe Lane to Vicars Lane and had been used for this purpose for many years. It was also used by drovers moving cattle
and sheep from the Wakefield Cattle Market to Leeds, although they had not the right to use it for that purpose but they did
so because it was a way of evading payment of tolls at Newton Bar on the Leeds Road which was, at that time, a 'Toll Road'.
In 1818 the Stanley Royd Hospital was in use and the Corpse Way passed through the hospital grounds and
in 1819 it was reported to the visiting magistrates that the use of this road was considered to be causing problems to the
efficiency of the hospital. In an endeavour to remove the nuisance of the Corpse Way users, a committee was set up to consider
a means of diverting this road to some other fields which would be clear of the hospital grounds. It would appear that they
failed to solve the problem, and the road continued to be used as it had for many years. In 1827 the hospital authorities
decided to take action to control the use of this road as a roadway except for the use of carrying corpses for it had been
established that there was no right of way. A notice was posted as follows:-
'TAKE NOTICE, BY ORDER OF THE MAGISTRATES, THIS ROAD IS STOPPED EXCEPT AS A FOOTPATH AND A CORPSE ROAD.
THE KEY TO THE GATES TO BE HAD AT THE ASYLUM. APRIL 20TH 1827.'
As gates had been erected, in effect the road was closed. The keys to open the gates had to be collected
and returned to the asylum. The Stanley villagers were not pleased with this action by the asylum authorities so they broke
down the gates in order to take though a corpse.
Now it was the asylum authorities who were annoyed so they had a deep trench dug across the roadwav. When
the Stanley inhabitants next needed to use this road to carry a corpse, they broke down the gates and filled in the trench.
There were several attempts by the asylum authorities over the next two years to close the road but on each occasion the Stanley
inhabitants took the law into their own hands. In a final effort to enforce their rights, the asylum authorities decided to
use the weight of the law and the Chief Constable of the Division was asked to take the necessary action to do so.
On the 25th of September 1831, Mr Ledger, Chief Constable of the Division along with his officers faced
a mob of approximately 2,000 angry Stanley villagers, many of whom were armed with shovels and pickaxes.
The police officers could not prevent the mob from once again breaking down the gates. The Chief Constable
took action by taking note of the ringleaders of this mob who were Joseph Ellis, George Hartley, Joseph Hartley, Thomas Crossland,
John Brooke, Henry Taylor, John Ball, George Firth, James Woofindale and Benjamin Heald. They were charged with 'creating
a riot and disturbance and breaking down fences on the 25 September 1831.'
The court hearing, on the 27th September 1831, was disorder and, to some extent, riotous.
However, the bench were a little sympathetic as they were told of a dying man in Stanley who had expressed
a wish that his body be carried to the cemetery through the Corpse Way. The defendants were bound over to appear at the Leeds
Assizes.
At the Assizes the defendants expressed their regret and they were discharged. The Corpse Way was then closed
and there was no further incident.
In 1849 a new part of the hospital was built which covered some part of the Corpse \Vay, but within this
building there is a subway which still exists which follows the route of the old, ancient Corpse Way.
Copy of the Accusation : The trial
The magistrates - His Majesty's Justices of Peace - were;-
John Pemberton Heywood and John Armitage
on the 27th September 1831.
Who saith, in the presence and hearing of Joseph Ellis, George Hartley, Joseph Hartley, Thomas
Crossland, John Brook the elder, Henry Taylor, John Ball, George Firth, James Woofindale and Benjamin Heald, the partys accused
by this Deposition, as follows:-
'I was at the Asylum In Stanley cum Wrenthorpe between three and four of the clock in the afternoon of last
Sunday. There was a funeral. I saw the several persons above named at the top of the road leading to the north side Of the
Asylum. They were all active in pulling down the fence. There was a great concuss of people and when the fence was down the
crowd and funeral went down the road in the highway leading from the East Moor to Saint John's spurn before us.'
Signed;
J. P. Heywood, J. Armitage, J. F. Ledger.
Compiled By Mr A L Ashworth, Secretary of Stanley Royd Hospital 1961-1973.
Saint Faith's in Hospital
One of the more unusual churches dedicated to the patron saint was the chapel of Stanley Royd Hospital in
Wakefield, which previously rejoiced in the name of the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum: the name inscribed on the church
silver. It has been closed for some years now, and abandoned, but it was, according to a history of the institution, a place
of refuge and peace, big, but never frightening or impersonal.
Patients came down there from the wards, into a church with two lofty naves and no transepts. The organ
was at the end of one nave and at the other a magnificent stained-glass window, picturing members of various hospital professions
with patients. Beneath it, a real patient had painted an unforgettable Last Supper, with the thirteen figures all bearing
the same haunted face.
Social segregation was built into the architecture of this St Faith’s. The arches separating the twin
naves strictly separated male patients and staff from female ones. In later years, all this changed, and the far smaller congregation
used only part of one nave. But to the end, as the chaplain relates, ‘the church never changed, so that all the time,
at every service, you would be conscious of the special role of this particular church – to be a focal point for the
hospital’s purpose of caring and healing. It is abandoned now. Then it was the heart of the asylum.'
(With thanks to the Revd Roger Grainger and Mrs Angela Capper for information)
