Claybury Asylum, Woodford, Essex: the Recreation Hall. Photograph by the London & County Photographic Co., [1893?].

Claybury Asylum was commissioned by the Middlesex Court of Magistrates in 1887, as the fourth Middlesex County Asylum. The architect was George Thomas Hine (1841-1916), a specialist in designing asylums for the insane. In 1889 the uncompleted building passed to the newly created London County Council which opened it in 1893. From 1893 to 1918 it was called Claybury Asylum, from 1918 to 1937 Claybury Mental Hospital, and from 1937 to its closure in 1995 Claybury Hospital

"At the heart of the asylum was a magnificent recreation hall capable of seating 1,200 patients ... The decoration was of high quality, with panelled walls of polished oak and an elliptical ceiling ornamented with Jackson's fibrous plasterwork": Richardson, loc. cit.

At one end of the hall is a proscenium arch stage surmounted by a bust of Shakespeare

Contained in an album of photographs showing: 1. the Chapel; 2. the Recreation Hall; 3. a linen room; 4. a kitchen; 5. a dormitory; 6. a nurses' day-room (?); 7. another nurses' day-room (?); 8. dining room; 9. a social room; 10. group portrait of nurses; 11. group portrait of six members of staff; 12. ironing room

Bromley, Kent : London & County Photographic Co., [1893?]

1 photograph : photoprint, albumen ; sheet 15.2 x 20.5 cm + album (bound in green buckram with gold lettering)

Souvenir ; LPC

Harriet Richardson, ed., English hospitals 1660-1948, London 1998, p. 175 (fig. 175 shows the opposite end of the same room)

Wellcome Collection 43457i