Fulbourn Hospital - History

History

The Lunacy Act 1845 and County Asylums Act 1845 mandated that all rate-levying authorities must provide a public asylum. In 1848 there was an agreement to set up a pauper lunatic asylum between Fulbourn and Cherry Hinton. The Justices met in Quarter Session of the County and Borough of Cambridge and the Liberty of the Isle of Ely (later known as The Three Bodies) who would have to raise the money to pay for the Asylum. They set up a committee with representatives from the three authorities to be known as The Committee of Visitors. On 30 September 1856 Admiral The Earl of Hardwicke, the Lord Lieutenant of the county and a member of the Visitors committee, laid the foundation stone and the Asylum opened on 06 November 1858. This also served Huntingdonshire after 1939.

One of the earliest performances of the Footlights Revue was an entertainment given by a group of Cambridge University undergraduates, with a cricket match included, at Fulbourn's "pauper lunatic asylum" in 1883.

A county asylum for Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Huntingdonshire was originally erected near Arlesey in 1858. It opened in 1860 and was known as the Three Counties Asylum. This became Fairfield Hospital in 1960 and finally closed in 1999.

Patients from the then Soke of Peterborough, including the "Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" John Clare, were committed to Northampton General Lunatic Asylum. In 1876, Northampton County Lunatic Asylum (later Northampton Mental Hospital, then St Crispin Hospital which closed in 1995) opened for pauper patients and the original general asylum changed its name to Northampton General Lunatic Asylum for the Middle and Upper Classes. This became St Andrew's Hospital for mental diseases in 1887.