Brecon and Radnor Asylum - Talgarth
August 2013 & December 2011
Originally called the Brecon and Radnor Joint Asylum on opening in 1903, the name was changed in 1921 to the Mid-Wales Hospital. Medical staff included a Chief Female Officer and a Head Male Attendant. There was also a farm, and service departments, which included a tailor, baker, shoe maker, printing shops, kitchen, laundry and church. There were also market gardens which consisted of about 8 acres.
The first patients at the hospital were admissions mainly from the Brecon area but numbers also arrived from towns further afield such as Swansea and Shrewsbury. Although initially intended to cater for 352 patients, at one point at the end of 1925 there were 455, stretching the resources to the limit. Some of this overcrowding was attributed to World War One.
In the early years the records reveal descriptions of mental illnesses such as dementia, epileptic insanity, delusional insanity, chronic mania, recurrent mania, alcoholic mania, melancholia. It was accepted that mania could be brought on variously by a number of causes, including of course, venereal disease and perhaps more unusually “disappointment in love”.
People were often put into asylums such as the one at Talgarth, for other reasons other than mental health problems. Patients also included those individuals that society didn’t have a place for: unmarried mothers, children with special needs and those disfigured by accidents such as burns from a fire.
In 1974 the Powys Health Authority came into being and assumed control, with matters changing again in 1993 with the formation of the Powys (NHS) Trust. The hospital was closed in 2000 with some facilities being combined with nearby Bronllys.
Originally called the Brecon and Radnor Joint Asylum on opening in 1903, the name was changed in 1921 to the Mid-Wales Hospital. Medical staff included a Chief Female Officer and a Head Male Attendant. There was also a farm, and service departments, which included a tailor, baker, shoe maker, printing shops, kitchen, laundry and church. There were also market gardens which consisted of about 8 acres.
The first patients at the hospital were admissions mainly from the Brecon area but numbers also arrived from towns further afield such as Swansea and Shrewsbury. Although initially intended to cater for 352 patients, at one point at the end of 1925 there were 455, stretching the resources to the limit. Some of this overcrowding was attributed to World War One.
In the early years the records reveal descriptions of mental illnesses such as dementia, epileptic insanity, delusional insanity, chronic mania, recurrent mania, alcoholic mania, melancholia. It was accepted that mania could be brought on variously by a number of causes, including of course, venereal disease and perhaps more unusually “disappointment in love”.
People were often put into asylums such as the one at Talgarth, for other reasons other than mental health problems. Patients also included those individuals that society didn’t have a place for: unmarried mothers, children with special needs and those disfigured by accidents such as burns from a fire.
In 1974 the Powys Health Authority came into being and assumed control, with matters changing again in 1993 with the formation of the Powys (NHS) Trust. The hospital was closed in 2000 with some facilities being combined with nearby Bronllys.
August 2013:
December 2011:
