Sunnyside Royal Hospital was a psychiatric hospital located in
Hillside, north of
Montrose,
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
. It closed in 2011 and is now used for housing.
History
The hospital was founded in 1781 by
Susan Carnegie as the Montrose Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary & Dispensary and obtained a Royal Charter in 1810. The original building was situated on the Montrose Links on a site bounded by Barrack Road, Ferry Road and Garrison Road.
In 1834, the Governors of the asylum, carrying out the wishes of Mrs Carnegie (who had strongly advocated the appointment of a medical specialist in insanity) appointed the phrenologist
William A. F. Browne
Dr William Alexander Francis Browne (1805–1885) was one of the most significant British asylum doctors of the nineteenth century. At Montrose Asylum (1834–1838) in Angus and at the Crichton Royal in Dumfries (1838–1857), Browne introduc ...
as medical superintendent. Browne was to prove an inspired choice and an energetic and resourceful leader. He regarded
public education
State schools (in England, Wales, Australia and New Zealand) or public schools (Scottish English and North American English) are generally primary or secondary schools that educate all students without charge. They are funded in whole or in pa ...
as part of his duties, and gave a series of lectures which became enormously popular and influential. In 1837, five lectures were published together under the title ''What Asylums Were, Are and Ought To Be'';
this book came to the attention of the Dumfries philanthropist
Elizabeth Crichton
Elizabeth Crichton (1779 – 1862) was a British philanthropist who founded the Crichton Royal Hospital in Dumfries. She had wanted to create a university but it was opened instead as the Crichton Institution for Lunatics in 1839. It now holds pa ...
. She travelled to Montrose, interviewed Browne and offered him the equivalent post at the Crichton Royal in Dumfries.
Browne was succeeded at Montrose by
Richard Poole, an early psychiatric historian.
Layout and design
In 1858, a new improved asylum designed by William Lambie Moffatt was completed to the north of
Montrose in the village of Hillside on lands of the farm of Sunnyside and the old site was vacated. This site was further developed with the construction of a new facility for private patients called Carnegie House in 1899. Despite this addition, overcrowding was a problem, as the asylum's patient numbers had grown to 670 by 1900. This situation required additional building work to be undertaken.
Consequently, two new buildings - Howden Villa (1901) and Northesk Villa (1904) - were added to the facility. Additional staff were required to care for the additional patients and the Westmount Cottages were built in 1905 to house them. In 1911 the lease of Sunnyside Farm finally expired and over 52 acres were purchased for the sum of £4,500. A further development was the addition of Angus House, which was built to accommodate elderly patients suffering from dementia in 1939.
In 1948, the
National Health Service
The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...
1946 (Scotland) Act brought the hospital under control of the Eastern Regional Hospital Board. Its name was changed from the Royal Asylum of Montrose to the Royal Mental Hospital of Montrose.
Sunnyside Royal Hospital
In 1962 it became Sunnyside Royal Hospital and came under the jurisdiction of new management. During the 1950s and 1960s, the introduction of new drugs lessened the need for prolonged admission of patients. In addition, the Mental Health (Scotland) Act of 1960 also significantly altered legislation in respect of
mental illness
A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...
and reduced the grounds on which someone could be detained in a mental hospital.
After the introduction of
Care in the Community
Care in the Community (also called "Community Care" or "Domiciliary Care") is a British policy of deinstitutionalisation, treating and caring for physically and mentally disabled people in their homes rather than in an institution. Institutional ca ...
in the early 1980s, the hospital went into a period of decline and, once patients had been transferred to the Susan Carnegie Centre at
Stracathro Hospital
Stracathro Hospital is a community hospital in Angus, Scotland. Established as a wartime Emergency Hospital Service facility during the Second World War, it was afterward developed as a District General Hospital. Since 2005 it has been the site o ...
, Sunnyside Royal Hospital closed in December 2011.
The archives of the hospital are held by Archive Services,
University of Dundee as part of the
NHS Tayside archive.
References
External links
Unlocking the Medicine Chest Sunnyside Royal Hospital Collection Summary
{{authority control
Former psychiatric hospitals in Scotland
Hospital buildings completed in 1858
Hospitals in Angus, Scotland
1781 establishments in Scotland
Defunct hospitals in Scotland