Tone Vale Hospital | |
The main hospital building | |
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Geography | |
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Location | Cotford St Luke, Somerset, England, United Kingdom |
Coordinates | ST167273 |
Organisation | |
Care system | Public NHS |
Hospital type | Psychiatric |
Services | |
History | |
Founded | 1892 |
Closed | 1995 |
Links | |
Website | None |
Lists | Hospitals in the United Kingdom |
Tone Vale Hospital was a psychiatric hospital located approximately 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) to the north west of Norton Fitzwarren, near Taunton, Somerset, England, in what is now the village of Cotford St Luke. It covered a large catchment area, with patients originating from places as far apart as Porlock (on the north western edge of Somerset) and Yeovil (on the south eastern edge).[1]
Contents |
The hospital was founded in 1892 and built in 1897,[2] and was originally known as the Somerset and Bath Asylum, Cotford.[3] In 1986, under Margaret Thatcher's government, the Audit Commission published a report Making a Reality of Community Care,[4] which proposed the policy that became Care in the Community and led to a number of mental hospitals being closed in the United Kingdom. In 1987, Tone Vale had 504 inpatients.[5] In 1992, the number had reduced to 350,[6] and in March 1994, a year prior to its closure,[7] the hospital had 117 inpatients.[8]
The hospital's first Medical Administrator was Dr Henry Aveline.[9]
James Stutt, an electrical engineer, worked at Tone Vale from 1931 to 1977, and devised an electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) machine which enabled electroshocks to be administered in controlled doses.[10]
In the 1940s, Dr John Walsh was one of the few psychiatrists in the UK to experiment with transorbital lobotomy.[11] In 1949 he operated on eight women at Tone Vale using electroconvulsive shock as anaesthetic.[12]
Somerset and England cricketer Harold Gimblett was admitted to Tone Vale with depression in 1953; he was treated with ECT.[13]
Following the arrival of psychiatrist Dr M F Bethel in the 1950s, child and adolescent psychiatric patients were treated at Tone Vale’s associated institution, Merrifield Children's Unit, rather than on a ward in the main hospital.[14]
Tone Vale Hospital is celebrated in the book The Tone Vale Story: A Century of Care,[15] edited by David Hinton and Fred Clarke. A less favourable view of the institution is given by Joyce Passmore in her memoir The Light in My Mind.[16] Margaret Sparshott's poem 'Tone Vale Hospital' is included in her published anthology A Matter of Identity.[17]
Many of the Tone Vale Hospital buildings have been demolished, but those with Grade II Listed status, including the Church of St Luke (the hospital chapel),[18] have been preserved and incorporated into the new village of Cotford St Luke.[19]