Storthes Hall

Coordinates: 53°36′40″N 1°43′44″W / 53.611°N 1.729°W / 53.611; -1.729

Storthes Hall Hospital in a state of disrepair

Storthes Hall is a part of the township of Kirkburton, West Yorkshire, England. A heavily wooded area, it comprises a single road, Storthes Hall Lane, which links Kirkburton with the nearby villages of Farnley Tyas and Thurstonland. To the immediate north is North Spring Wood. Boothroyd Wood occupies the area to the south whilst Myers Wood can be found to the east. Myers Wood is the site of a medieval iron working site.

Psychiatric hospital

A psychiatric hospital operated at Storthes Hall between 1904 and 1991. Originally founded as an asylum. Originally named as the Storthes Hall Mental Hospital (1929–1938), then as the West Riding Mental Hospital (1939–1948), and finally as the Storthes Hall Hospital (1949–1991).^[1] A book, Storthes Hall Remembered, written by a former nurse employed there, tells the story of Storthes Hall.

A former mill owner's house, Storthes Hall Mansion, located closer to Kirkburton centre, was also used as a psychiatric hospital and run independently as The Mansion Hospital. It also closed in 1991 and eventually converted back to a private residence. The Mansion is a Grade II listed Building.^[2] A book, which is now out of print, written in 1985, by Douglas A Spencer, on the Mansion was titled "Some Historical Records on the Mansion Hospital and Storthes Hall Hospital, Kirkburton, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire".^[3]

Storthes Hall Hospital was one of several hospitals investigated in 1967 as a result of the publication of Barbara Robb's book "Sans Everything". Accusations covered a thirty-two week period of serious violent assaults, with fists or weapons, against male patients of all ages, committed by four named Male Nurses. It was also alleged that it was like Belsen because it was a “brutal, bestial, beastly place”—it was a “hell-hole”.^[4]

Site

The area has some private housing, however the University of Huddersfield supplies most of the occupants in a campus, the Storthes Hall Park Student Village. Recent planning permission was granted to a retirement village on the remainder of the hospital site. The site previously provided training facilities to Huddersfield Town FC^[5] before their move to the recently developed state of the art Canalside facility off Leeds Road near the John Smith's Stadium.

Fate of hospital buildings

Most of the hospital buildings on the Storthes Hall site have been reduced to rubble, including the house that once housed Edward Bryan. The former administration building is surrounded by fencing and barbed wire. The bar serving the student village, "the Arboretum" is an original building. The hospital's mortuary is still intact.

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  Most of the outbuildings have been demolished but a few remain.

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  The road leading to one of the last remaining buildings.

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  Graveyard memorial at Church of St Thomas, Thurstonland, where around 2,000 patients are buried

References

External links

• Myers Wood Iron Workings
• Storthes Hall Student Village
• Derelict places.co.uk - Archive images of Storthes Hall