St Clement's Hospital was a mental health facility at Foxhall Road in

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line r ...

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

, England.

History

The hospital, which was designed by William Ribbans in the

Italianate style The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

using a single linear corridor layout, opened as the Ipswich Borough

Lunatic Asylum The lunatic asylum (or insane asylum) was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital. The fall of the lunatic asylum and its eventual replacement by modern psychiatric hospitals explains the rise of organized, institutional psychiatry ...

in 1870. An extra story was added to the building in the 1890s and it became Ipswich Mental Hospital in 1908. The hospital joined 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 " ...

as St Clement's Hospital in 1948. 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 closed in 2002. The main buildings were subsequently converted into offices for administrative use by

Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) is a large mental health trust and an NHS Foundation Trust. It runs services in Norfolk and Suffolk, England, chiefly at Hellesdon Hospital, Norvic and Juilan Hospital in Norwich, Northgate in Gre ...

. This use continued until early 2017 when the buildings were converted into apartments as Belgrove Place.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Clement's Hospital, Ipswich Hospitals in Suffolk Defunct hospitals in England Hospital buildings completed in 1870 Hospitals established in 1870 1870 establishments in England 2002 disestablishments in England Hospitals disestablished in 2002 Former psychiatric hospitals in England St John's Ward, Ipswich