Glenside Hospital Museum

General information

The museum transports visitors into a world that has evolved considerably over the last 150 years. The wide range of artifacts and images provide insights into life at Glenside Hospital and of the local Learning Disability Hospitals of the Stoke Park Group and the Burden Neurological Institution. The stories provide gentle opportunities to consider mental health care and our own well-being.

The museum was founded by Dr Donal Early, a consultant psychiatrist who worked at Glenside Hospital from 1944 - 1979. Dr Early, Dennis Griffiths and other volunteers began collecting artifacts during this time, and placing them into storage. Then the hospital granted the use of the balcony overlooking the dining hall at Glenside. The collection gradually built up, as people donated artifacts to the museum.

When the Hospital closed in 1994, the use of the derelict church originally built for the patients in 1881 was leased to the Museum. The church was in a very poor state of disrepair, all of the stained glass windows were boarded up and damaged, and the interior had become home to pigeons and squirrels. Volunteers set to work scrubbing floors, removing pews, boards from the windows and the museum gradually developed with Dr Early as the guiding light.

Today the museum continues to be developed by a diverse range volunteers of all ages helping to tell the story of mental health care through an examination of the museum's extensive collection.

Dr Peter Carpenter helped Dr Early publish a book depicting the history of Glenside Hospital shortly before his death in 2004. The 'Lunatic Pauper Palace' is on sale in the museum as well as on Amazon.