Claybury Asylum

Claybury Asylum was a psychiatric hospital at Woodford Bridge in Essex. It was opened in 1893 making it the fifth London County Council Asylum.

History
Claybury was built from 1889-1893. The architect was George Thomas Hine; Peter Cracknell describes it as the first Compact Arrow design. Situated on the brow of a hill, the site incorporated around 50 acres of ancient woodland and 95 acres of open parkland, ponds, pasture and historic gardens. These had been designed in 1789 by the landscape architect Sir Humphry Repton for the owner, James Hatch, of what was then called the Claybury Estate. "Claybury" was the name given to a fictitious village in the stories of W W Jacobs, but is generally thought to be based on nearby Loughton, where Jacobs lived.

In 1900 it became known as London County Lunatic Asylum, Ilford.

Closure
With the Care in the Community Programme and the inevitable decline in patient numbers from its peak of 4,000 patients, Claybury faced a difficult future. The NHS pressed for extensive demolition and maximum new build, whereas the Local Planning Authority and English Heritage argued for maximum retention of the historic buildings and restriction of new build to the existing footprint, in accordance with the Green Belt allocation in the Unitary Development Plan.

A 60 day Public Inquiry was held in 1997 and the Council/English Heritage position was accepted. The hospital was shut down and conveted into luxury flats called Repton Park by Crest Nicholson, working closely with English Heritage and the London Wildlife Trust.

Ghosts
There have been many reported ghost sightings at the site, both while it was still a mental hospital and more recently as the Repton Park development. In Rodinsky's Room, a book by Iain Sinclair and Rachel Lichtenstein about David Rodinsky, they mark the tower at L. C. C. Claybury Mental Hospital, as the "fixed compass-point from which Rodinsky drew his circuits of London. All his maps were based on that sightline" (Dark Lanthorns 32). As a result of Lichtenstein's research, we learn that this is the hospital where Rodinsky's sister, Bessie, was sectioned, a fate that would befall Rodinsky himself when the authorities forced him out of his home on Princelet Street, setting in motion a series of events that led to his eventual entry into a mental institution in Surrey (Longrove), where he later died of heart failure.