| St. Columba's Hospital | |
|---|---|
 St. Columba's Hospital | |
  Shown in Ireland | |
| Geography | |
| Location | Sligo, County Sligo, Ireland |
| Coordinates | 54°16′54″N 8°27′41″W / 54.28174°N 8.46134°W |
| Organisation | |
| Type | Specialist |
| Services | |
| Speciality | Psychiatric hospital |
| History | |
| Opened | 1855 |
| Closed | 1992 |
St. Columba's Hospital (Irish: Ospidéal Naomh Colm Cille) is a former psychiatric hospital in Sligo, County Sligo, Ireland.
History
editThe hospital, which was designed by William Deane Butler in the Elizabethan-style, opened as the Sligo Asylum in 1855.[1] It became Sligo Mental Hospital in the 1920s and went on to become St. Columba's Hospital in the 1950s.[1] After the introduction of deinstitutionalisation in the late 1980s the hospital went into a period of decline[2][3] and closed in 1992.[4] After being converted for hotel use, it re-opened as the Clarion Hotel in 2005[4] and was subsequently re-branded as the Clayton Hotel. As of 2021, 167 rooms are available for use.[5]
Sligo Heritage and History club
edit"St. Columba's Hospital - Sligo Lunatic Asylum for the counties of Sligo and Leitrim or also known as the District Lunatic Asylum It was designed by architect Mr. Deane Butler and built by local Mr. Caldwell. Built on an elevated ___location overlooking the countryside, the foundation stone was set down on 7th November 1847, It is said that under the so said foundation stone there is a copy of the Sligo champion and the Sligo journal, silver and copper coins and an account of what happened on that day sealed in a bottle. The building was completed in 1852, and started to house patients in 1855, the building is made up of two parts the central part which costed £35,199 and the two wings which were built later on at £18,000 due to the needs for additional accommodation. The central building and wings were built to accommodate 470 patients, however up until 1899 the annual number of patients ranged from 400 to 424. In 1886 there was 217 patients from Sligo and 187 for Leitrim, and the expenditure from the same year was £7,756, 10s. and 2d. In 1883 Dr. Joseph Petit took over the position of Resident Medical Superintendent from a Dr.McMunn. In doing so Dr. Petit introduced new treatments of its day to the asylum. For instance he done away with restraints that were once seen as a necessity, he also got rid of the use of single rooms and instead had patients sleep in a sleeping apartments or dormitories. Petit also wished to give the patients a feeling of more freedom, so he removed all the doors from the apartments and dormitories. Another feature he changed was the old "airing courts" where patients had some time to walk around a spacious area surrounded by high walls; patients under Petit were allowed to roam the grounds freely at their own leisure. Some were worried at this time that the patients would lead to escape however the new measures was a refreshing change to patients who no longer felt caged in and even those that went home with family and friends came back to the asylum of their own free will. When a patient was admitted there was no talk of a fee or how the patient would pay, families seldom paid and those who did was due to because they cared for the patient or "from dread of being charged with shabbiness". In 1889 there was 439 patients and 740 in the 1920's and even more in the 1950's, now imagine how much it would take to run the building? In November 1951, 71tons of turf was brought in, more the following year. 873 breakfasts, dinners and suppers were prepared on 10th October 1958 using 112lbs of oatmeal, 349lbs of rice, 77gallons of milk, 235lbs of butter, 938lbs of bread, 534lbs of beef, 122lbs of bacon, 13 hundred weight of potatoes, 109lbs of tea, 521lbs of sugar, 327lbs of fish, 384 eggs and 10lbs of flour. The farm out the back was worked by the patients in order to give them something to do and give them exercise while also providing the hospital with milk, vegetables and meat." on facebook--find source of info
References
edit- ^ a b "Saint Columba's, Saint Columba's Road, Sligo, County Sligo". National Inventory of Architectural Heritage. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
- ^ "After the Asylum". Irish Times. 13 July 2013. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
- ^ Cotter, Noelle (2009). "Transfer of Care? A Critical Analysis of Post-Release Psychiatric Care for Prisoners in the Cork Region" (PDF). University College Cork. p. 5. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
- ^ a b "€7m for Sligo's four-star Clarion Hotel". Irish Times. 28 October 2015. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
- ^ "Clayton Hotel". Ireland North West. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
Irish times
editAt its peak, over 1,000 people were living as in-patients at St Columba's psychiatric hospital in Sligo. Psychiatric hospital were a part of this country's history and a new book by Professor Brendan Kelly who talks about the "well intentioned mistakes of our collective past."[1]
Professor Kelly looks at the country's various psychiatric hospitals in his book, 'Hearing Voices: The History of Psychiatry in Ireland' including St Columba's.
Professor Kelly writes: "Ireland's emptied psychiatric institutions bear powerful witness to a part of our history that is as troubling as it was well-intended, as heart-breakingly simple as it is difficult to understand today.
"These are haunting, moving places, which aimed to assist individuals who were systematically alienated from their home communities: the mentally ill, intellectually disabled and many who were simply "different". Some found true asylum here, while others found these places cold and harsh - but all ended up here following rejection by an even colder society, only too willing to let them languish for decades behind asylum walls."
"In the late 1800s and 1900s, Ireland had more asylum beds for the mentally ill per head of population than any other country in the world. This remarkable development was linked with widespread hysteria about the apparent "increase of insanity in Ireland", as the number of people who were apparently mentally ill rose steadily, placing ever-increasing pressure on the new asylums as they opened across the country.
"The Irish asylum movement found its roots in the very real problems presented by the destitute mentally ill in the early 1800s. In 1817, a Committee of the House of Commons heard vivid evidence about the plight of the mentally ill in Ireland.
"When a strong man or woman gets the complaint, the only way they have to manage is by making a hole in the floor of the cabin, not high enough for the person to stand up in, with a crib over it to prevent his getting up. This hole is about five feet deep, and they give this wretched being his food there, and there he generally dies."
The nineteenth century duly saw the establishment of a network of public "asylums", with large institutions opening initially in Cork and Dublin, where the Richmond Asylum (later St. Brendan's Hospital) opened in 1814 and soon became one of Ireland's largest institutions. In 1825, a similar institution was established in Armagh and, over the following decade, a further seven opened in Limerick, Belfast, Derry, Carlow, Portlaoise, Clonmel and Waterford, at a total cost of £245,000.
"The asylum in Sligo, later known as St Columba's Hospital, opened to patients in 1855, at a cost of £53,199. Like most asylums, St Columba's demonstrated a complicated mix of custody and care: while all admissions were (legally) on an involuntary basis, the hospital generally ceased using physical restraints in 1883, leaving patients "free" to roam through the large asylum buildings and extensive grounds. This was a highly progressive development, and one which could have usefully been emulated elsewhere.
"Expansion continued, however, and by 1906, there were 687 people in the Sligo asylum, along with one Resident Medical Superintendent and just one Assistant Medical Officer. As a result of the size of asylums such as that in Sligo, a majority of people living in or near a town with an asylum had some connection with the institution, as a patient, relative of patient, worker or supplier. Inevitably, there were powerful economic, social and community interests in maintaining the hospitals' enormous size.
"The mental hospitals were not, therefore, always the isolated, disconnected institutions they are sometimes portrayed as. Communities and families used the mental hospitals in complex and often subtle ways, according to community and family needs: e.g. removing relatives from the asylums in the summer to work at home and then returning them to the asylum for the winter ("wintering in"). Medical opinion was not even required for committal for much of the time, and Ireland's asylum archives are replete with letters from doctors urging families and governmental authorities to cooperate with the discharge of patients if at all possible.
"Patient numbers in Sligo eventually peaked at approximately 1,100 and, following some decades of decline in numbers, St Columba's closed its doors as a psychiatric hospital in the 1990s. The site was bought by a hotel and extensive building work resulted in the preservation of the facade and an interior wall, and the opening of a bright, modern hotel.
"Across Ireland, similar transformations were occurring at some (but not all) of the old mental hospital buildings. To the close observer, however, the ghosts of the past are often still apparent, albeit in a nostalgic, faded way. For visitors to the re-purposed asylum buildings (be they now hotels, educational institutions, apartments or other facilities), a walk in the grounds is made all the more resonant by an awareness of the thousands of patients and staff who spent so many years in these settings, walking these grounds, often both living and dying here. A reflective visit to the old asylum in Sligo or elsewhere is perfectly complemented by a reading of The Secret Scripture (Faber and Faber, 2008), Sebastian Barry's elegiac meditation on the declining years of asylum life in Ireland, soon to be a movie.
Ireland's emptied psychiatric institutions bear powerful witness to a part of our history that is as troubling as it was well-intended, as heart-breakingly simple as it is difficult to understand today. These are haunting, moving places, which aimed to assist individuals who were systematically alienated from their home communities: the mentally ill, intellectually disabled and many who were simply "different". Some found true asylum here, while others found these places cold and harsh - but all ended up here following rejection by an even colder society, only too willing to let them languish for decades behind asylum walls.
Today, many of these buildings face very uncertain futures. It may be tempting to try to forget about them, let them decay, and demolish the remains. This would be wrong. Ireland's mental hospital buildings reflect a complicated, conflicted element of our past. The forgotten dramas of thousands of lives lived behind these walls deserve examination, reflection and commemoration.
One way to pay tribute is to respect the surviving mental hospital buildings, and re-invent them in socially useful ways, for the benefit of all. Another way is to preserve their archival medical records, often in shocking states of decay, which hold invaluable lessons about the well-intentioned mistakes of our collective past.
- ^ "Times Past Recalled in Book". Irish Independent. Retrieved 7 February 2025.