Sunnyside Hospital

Sunnyside Hospital 1863-1999, was the first mental asylum to be built in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was initally known as 'Sunnyside Lunatic Asylum', and its first patients were 17 people who had previously been kept in the Lyttleton gaol.

In 2007, Hilmorton Hospital is just one of the mental health services that are based on the old Sunnyside Hospital grounds.

Architecture


Sunnyside Hospital was primarily designed by the New Zealand Victorian gothic architect, Benjamin Mountfort, with an administration building designed by John Campbell.

Staff
Edward William Seagar was the first superintendent of Sunnyside Hospital.

In 1995, four years before the hospital's closure, nurses walked off the job because of dangerous working conditions.

Famous patients

 * Rita Angus (1950) Artist

"[Mrs R. said it would] be a good idea for me to admit myself as a voluntary boarder to Sunnyside Mental Hospital where there was a new electric treatment, which, in her opinion, would help me. . . . I woke toothless and was admitted to Sunnyside Hospital and I was given the new electric treatment, and suddenly my life was thrown out of focus. I could not remember. I was terrified."
 * Janet Frame Writer. Frame described some of her experiences in Sunnyside Hospital in her autobiography An Angel at my Table, and her novel Faces in the Water.


 * Mabel Howard ( - 23 June 1972) Union worker, politican, and New Zealand's first woman cabinet minister.


 * Richard Pearse (June 1951 - July 1953) Inventor and aviator. Pearce flight tested aircraft in New Zealand from 1902, and is reputed to have successfully flown on about the 31st March 1903.