Coordinates: 53°17′38″N 2°17′10″W / 53.294°N 2.286°W / 53.294; -2.286 The Mary Dendy Hospital was a hospital for the "mentally subnormal" located in Great Warford, Cheshire, England. It was founded in 1902 as the Sandlebridge Colony when the Lancashire and Cheshire Society for the Permanent Care of the Feeble-Minded opened two houses in Sandlebridge in Cheshire.
Mary Dendy (after whom the establishment was renamed following her death in 1933) was the secretary (and later president) of the society, involved in agitation for the reform of provision for the "mentally sub-normal", and gave evidence to the Royal Commission looking into the issue, which produced the Radnor Report, leading to the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913. She repeated in her evidence to the commission a view she had frequently expressed previously, that the mentally subnormal and the mentally ill should be recognised as separate problems, requiring different approaches, and hence the mentally subnormal required separate facilities and institutions distinct from the traditional lunatic asylum: the Sandlebridge Colony was the first permanent residential care home for mentally deficient children in the United Kingdom and thus an exemplar for this approach.
With charitable and state support, the Colony expanded, acquiring new accommodation for residents and staff, a laundry, schoolroom and hospital, farm buildings, land and livestock and a recreation hall. At its peak, the hospital owned a large proportion of the property in Great Warford.
| Year | Numbers in residence |
|---|---|
| 1909 | 204 children |
| 1919 | 283 |
| 1929 | 362 |
| 1941 | 422 children and adults |
In 1941, financial problems forced the Society to relinquish control to Cheshire County Council. Post-war other approaches were considered more appropriate, and Mary Dendy Hospital (as it had become known) was run down, finally closing in 1989. All that survives today is a unit operating on Chelford Road which now takes care of mentally ill patients who would previously have been sent to Rampton Secure Hospital. One of the largest of its old sites has been demolished to make way for a modern housing estate at Buttermere Drive
Read more about Mary Dendy Hospital: Thinking Behind The Colony
Famous quotes containing the word hospital:
“The church is a sort of hospital for men’s souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailor’s Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)