page_title: Beechworth Asylum
section_title: Ha-ha walls
hierarchical_section_title: Beechworth Asylum / Ha-ha walls
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo at the beginning of the remains of the ha-ha at Beechworth Asylum, from the inside of the wall, showing the sloping trench.
context_page_description: Beechworth Asylum, also known in later years as the Beechworth Hospital for the Insane and Mayday Hills Mental Hospital, is a decommissioned hospital located in Beechworth, a town of Victoria, Australia. Mayday Hills Lunatic Asylum was the second such Hospital to be built in Victoria, being one of the three largest. Mayday Hills Hospital closed in 1995 after 128 years of operation.
  The asylum was surrounded by almost 106 hectares of farmland, making the hospital self-sufficient with its own piggery, orchards, kitchen gardens, fields, stables and barn. For recreation, the asylum included tennis courts, an oval and cricket pavilion, kiosk and theatre.
context_section_description: One of the distinctive features of both Kew Asylum and Beechworth Asylum is the use of a variation on ha-ha walls around the patients courtyards. These ha-has consisted of a trench, one side of which was vertical and faced with stone or bricks, the other side sloped and turfed. From the inside, the walls presented a tall face to patients, preventing them from escaping, while from outside, the walls looked low so as not to suggest imprisonment.
caption: Photo at the beginning of the remains of the ha-ha at Beechworth Asylum, from the inside of the wall, showing the sloping trench.
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