page_title: Seacliff Lunatic Asylum
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Seacliff Lunatic Asylum / History
caption_attribution_description: Plan of Seacliff Hospital, New Zealand, 120 years old, thus in public domain. Creator of this document, Robert Lawson, died in 1902.
context_page_description: Seacliff Lunatic Asylum was a psychiatric hospital in Seacliff, New Zealand. When built in the late 19th century, it was the largest building in the country, noted for its scale and extravagant architecture. It became infamous for construction faults resulting in partial collapse, as well as a 1942 fire which destroyed a wooden outbuilding, claiming 37 lives, because the victims were trapped in a locked ward.
  The asylum was less than 20 miles north of Dunedin and close to the county centre of Palmerston, in an isolated coastal spot within a forested reserve. The site is now divided between the Truby King Recreation Reserve, where most of the old buildings have been demolished and most of the area remains dense woodland, and privately owned land where several of the smaller hospital buildings have been renovated completely.
  Seacliff is claimed to be haunted by former patients of what was the country's biggest building at the time.
caption: New Zealand's largest building was an exercise in Gothic Revival architecture, but its facades belied the utilitarianism of its repetitious interior.
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