page_title: Whittingham Hospital
section_title: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: Whittingham Hospital / History / Early years
caption_attribution_description: English: Whittingham Hospital
context_page_description: Whittingham Hospital was a psychiatric hospital in the parish of Whittingham, near Preston, Lancashire, England. The hospital opened in 1873 as the Fourth Lancashire County Asylum and grew to be the largest mental hospital in Britain, and pioneered the use of electroencephalograms. It closed in 1995.
context_section_description: In 1866 the first three Lancashire lunatic asylums, at Prestwich, Rainhill and Lancaster, were deemed to be full. Extra accommodation was urgently needed and to this end the building of Whittingham Asylum "for pauper lunatics" began in 1869. The hospital was designed by Henry Littler of Manchester, Architect to the Lancashire Asylums Board and built of red brick made from clay dug on site. The buildings followed a plan of multiple quadrangles with inter-connecting corridors radiating from a long axial corridor section.
  The hospital was officially opened as the Fourth Lancashire County Lunatic Asylum on 1 April 1873, although 115 patients had already been admitted in the previous year, some of whom helped with the building work. The large complex (to be known as St. Luke's Division from 1958) was completed in June 1875; it had an initial capacity of 1100 inmates and included an Anglican church, a Catholic chapel, a recreation hall and a large farm estate. Before long it also had its own railway, telephone exchange, post office, reservoirs, gas works, brewery, orchestra, brass band, ballroom and butchers' shop.
  In 1878 a new annexe (known as St. John's Division from 1958) was built on 68 acres (28 ha) of land to the north of the site. The annexe was completed in 1880 and could accommodate 700 patients and, by the special agreement of the Postmaster General, the hospital's own dedicated Post Office. The hospital contributed £15,500 towards Fulwood Urban District Council's scheme to extract water from Beacon Fell, in exchange for 90,000 gallons of water per day to be supplied, free of charge, to the hospital. This was achieved under the Fulwood and Whittingham Water Act of 1882. In 1884, a sanatorium was established in the grounds for patients with infectious diseases.
  In 1892 works began for the grounds to be illuminated by electric lamps; these works were completed in 1894. In 1900 an annexe called Cameron House was opened to the northwest of the main building, joined in 1912 by a third annexe, later to become known as St Margaret's Division in 1958. By 1915 the number of inmates was recorded as 2,820 – more than double the asylum's original capacity.
caption: A ward exterior pictured in 2008
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