Welcome to the Three Counties Asylum website
The Three Counties Asylum in Bedfordshire cared for psychiatric patients from 1860 until it closed its doors in 1999. After a full restoration and conversion into houses, apartments, health club and restaurant, the site remains a significant landmark on the Arlesey-Stotfold border. It is one of very few complete Victorian asylums in the UK.
This website contains a wealth of information about the asylum. The contents of this site were originally compiled by Rich and Ros Knight, who built a personal collection of many artefacts from the asylum, as well as researching the articles and stories contained here.
Fairfield Parish Council acquired the original website from Rich and Ros in March 2022, along with many asylum artefacts which are now on display in a small museum within Fairfield Community Hall, Fairfield Park (the housing development on the site of the Three Counties Asylum).
Fairfield Parish Council would like to thank Rich and Ros for their devoted work in setting up and maintaining the original Three Counties Asylum website.
The Early History of the Three Counties Asylum
In 1837 the authorities in Hertfordshire and Huntingdonshire started sending their lunatics to the Bedford Asylum. This asylum was built in 1812 with a capacity for forty patients, and it was running out of space for the living and the dead. In 1852 a survey was commissioned with recommendations for improvements to the old asylum, and a report was prepared which stressed the importance of moral treatment which included a therapeutic environment, good food, fresh air and exercise. It was established that the Bedford Asylum was no longer capable of providing this sort of treatment and care. The improvements and alterations were considered to be too costly for the old building, and a committee was formed to draw up plans to build a new asylum.
Originally Cambridgeshire wanted to join with Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire. It was agreed in 1853 that an asylum would be built for the four counties, but by the summer of that year the Cambridgeshire authorities were unable to agree on where the new asylum should be located. An agreement could not be reached, and Cambridgeshire withdrew from the plan. This left Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire to go ahead with plans for the new asylum which would be called 'Three Counties Asylum'. In 1856 George Fowler Jones was appointed as architect for this new asylum, having previously built the new Cambridgeshire Asylum at Fulbourn on the outskirts of Cambridge town.
The committee considered two sites; the first at Cadwell Farm in Ickleford, near Hitchin, and the second Arlesey Rectory Farm. Their report concluded that Arlesey Rectory Farm was not suitable because of the heavy character of the soil which was unsuitable for a lunatic asylum (bearing in mind the soil would have to be worked and farmed). Cadwell Farm had great possibilities - light workable soil and a plentiful supply of water. It was near to the Great Northern Railway and had beautiful surroundings, however there was no flat area on the 170 acre site to build a large asylum. It was felt by the commissioners of lunacy that, because of its unlevel nature, the land at Cadwell would cuase problems in supervising patients when working outside.
Land belonging to Major Wilkinson of Stotfold was inspected and found to have everything the committee was looking for - light and good soil, gentle slopes with plenty of space to build an asylum on the 200 acre site. On the 10th March 1856, the sum of £11,000 was paid to Major Wilkinson for his 200 acre site, and another 50 acres were purchased from Great North Railway to provide access. This was to become the Arlesey drive and tramway.
In June 1856 the site was clear and ready to start work. On the 1st May 1857 William Webster of Boston, Lincolnshire, started work on the new asylum and set up his sheds and workshops along the east side of Stotfold Road. After a short ceremony the chairman of the building committee, Marlborough Pryor, turned the first sod of soil. Webster started work on the foundations and a new asylum was born. It would take three years and nine months before the first patients could be moved from Bedford Asylum to their new home.
