St Conal's Hospital ( ga, Ospidéal Naomh Conaill) was a

psychiatric hospital Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health hospitals, behavioral health hospitals, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, dissociative ...

located in

Letterkenny Letterkenny ( ga, Leitir Ceanainn , meaning 'hillside of the O'Cannons'), nicknamed 'the Cathedral Town', is the largest and most populous town in County Donegal, a county in Ulster, the northern province in Ireland. Letterkenny lies on the R ...

County Donegal County Donegal ( ; ga, Contae Dhún na nGall) is a county of Ireland in the province of Ulster and in the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the town of Donegal in the south of the county. It has also been known as County Tyrconne ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. Opened in 1866 (as the Donegal District Lunatic Asylum), it had people work on its

farm A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used fo ...

as recently as 1995. The building is still extant.

History

The hospital, which was designed by George Wilkinson in the neo-Georgian style using a corridor layout, was built by Matthew McClelland at a cost of £37,900 and opened as the Donegal District Lunatic Asylum in February 1866. At that time it accommodated 300 patients (150 male and 150 female). It has been described as "one of the finest buildings in the country". A large new building was erected at the rear of the site in 1912. The facility became the Donegal Mental Hospital in the 1920s and benefited from a new chapel, designed in the neo-Norman style, being erected in the 1930s. The facility was renamed St Conal's Hospital in 1956. As the hospital expanded nursing staff numbers reached close to 500 in the 1960s. After the introduction of

deinstitutionalisation Deinstitutionalisation (or deinstitutionalization) is the process of replacing long-stay psychiatric hospitals with less isolated community mental health services for those diagnosed with a mental disorder or developmental disability. In the late ...

in the late 1980s the hospital went into a period of decline. However patients were still required to carry out activities on the hospital's working farm which only closed in 1995.

Electroconvulsive therapy Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a psychiatry, psychiatric treatment where a generalized seizure (without muscular convulsions) is electrically induced to manage refractory mental disorders.Rudorfer, MV, Henry, ME, Sackeim, HA (2003)"Electroco ...

(ECT) was still being carried out on patients in the hospital in the late 1990s. The hospital had people work on its

until 1995.

Seosamh Mac Grianna Seosamh Mac Grianna (20 August 1900 – 11 June 1990) was a writer from County Donegal. He was born into a family of poets and storytellers, which included his brothers Séamus Ó Grianna and Seán Bán Mac Grianna, in Rann na Feirste, County ...

spent three decades at St Conal's Hospital. On 27 August 2007, a blaze which broke out at 5:45 pm in a downstairs room took fire services approximately four hours to extinguish. The main hospital closed in 2010. In March 2020, a memorial was to be unveiled at new Leck Cemetery to remember the hundreds of patients whom the Management Committee had buried in unmarked graves there from March 1902, when the means to dispose of their bodies on a site at the back of the hospital grounds ceased. The memorial had been due to be unveiled the previous December but poor weather forecasts prompted its postponement. The practice of burying dead patients there continued late into the twentieth century, almost until the hospital shut. Since 2015, Lugh Films have been working on a documentary about life behind the hospital walls, intended as a "

social history Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

". During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, St Conal's Hospital was used as a drive-through test centre.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Conals Hospital 1866 establishments in Ireland 2010 disestablishments in Ireland Buildings and structures in Letterkenny Defunct hospitals in the Republic of Ireland Hospital buildings completed in 1866 Hospitals disestablished in 2010 Hospitals established in 1866 Hospitals in County Donegal Conals

History

See also

References