Hyatt Family Tree

Cecil died in the Eastern Counties Asylum for Idiots, Imbeciles and the Feebleminded. The hospital was in Essex Hall, Colchester. By the beginning of the 20th century Essex Hall - financed privately and with cash from Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire county councils - had become the Royal Eastern Counties Institution for Mental Defectives. There was still a whiff of the Gothic about the place, but that was beginning to pass. Colchester was starting to get a name for itself as a pioneer in what was to become mental health services.

By the time Essex Hall's "annex", Turner Village, was opened by the then Duke of Kent in 1935, the institution had nearly 2,000 beds in centres across north Essex. Meanwhile, the other arm to Essex's mental health revolution, Severalls - then called the Essex County Mental Hospital - had opened in 1913 with 1,800 beds, research facilities and county council funding.

Essex Hall was extended in 1903 to provide an additional 20 beds. A new block, Bristol House, named after Frederick William John, marquis of Bristol (d. 1907), a previous chairman, was opened in 1915 for another 100 patients. By that date the asylum was called the Royal Eastern Counties' institution for the mentally defective. In 1916 Hillsleigh House, East Hill, was bought to house 34 patients, and in 1918 Lexden House was leased as a school for high grade females, increasing the institution's beds to 630. Greenwood school, Halstead, was opened for 86 girls in 1922, enabling Lexden House to become a hostel; about the same time East Hill House was obtained as an upper boys' school, and Hillsleigh was then used as a school for the younger boys. In 1923 Bridge Home, Witham, was bought to provide 233 beds for patients from the institution.

From: 'Hospitals', A History of the County of Essex: Volume 9: The Borough of Colchester (1994), pp. 284-290. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=22004. Date accessed: 30 October 2008.