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Barrow hospital was Bristol's second purpose built hospital for the treatment of the mentally ill. The earlier Bristol Mental Hospital at fishponds, built in the 1850's was very much a typical victorian style asylum, where as Barrow was conceived from its very beginning to be a modern progressive hospital. By the 1930's Bristol Mental Hospital was becoming very overcrowded and the need for additional facilities was widely acknowledged, so Bristol corporation purchased 260 acres of land near Barrow Gurney at the market value on £20,000 as the site of the new purpose built Hospital.
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The hospital was constructed between 1934 and 1937 under the supervision of architect Sir George Oatley of Bristol, During the early years of the 20th century there was a dramatic shift in the design of mental hospitals, earlier institutions like Bristol's existing mental hospital had been designed around a imposing complex of ward building liked together and to service areas by a network of corridors into a single large hospital complex. The practical benefits of this style of hospital where one part of the hospital could quickly and easily be reached from any other part of the hospital began to gave way to the perceived therapeutic benefits of a dispersed layout. Where patients were treated in a complex of smaller separate villas clustered around the hospital site which was believed to give the patients a greater sense of community and privacy. Barrow Hospital was designed with these modern theory's in mind employing a colony layout of separate wards and villas around the site. The hospital buildings are of a utilitarian red brick design dictated by the economic situation of the time, however the site selected for the hospital lay in the center of an ancient woodland which was improved and landscaped around the hospital grounds screening the seperate villa's from each other's and creating a peaceful environment for the patients. The woodland in the hospital grounds was used for many years to provide patients with breaks from the routine of ward life.
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The first patients arrived in may of 1938 but the hospital was not officially opened until a year later when Sir Lawrence Brock CBE of the Hospital Board of Control cut the ribbon. However within four months it was requisitioned by the governement to act as a Royal Naval Hospital following the outbreak of the second world war. The Navy stayed at the hospital until Autumn 1946 when they returned control to Bristol Corporation greatly easing the overcrowding at Bristol Mental Hospital, whose population had grown throughout the war. On the 5th July 1948 the hospital was transferred to the newly formed National Health Service from then on Both Barrow and Bristol Mental Hospital were jointly managed by the Bristol Hospital Management Committee under the South Western Regional Hospital Board. Barrow true to its intial design was noted as a progressive hospital with a well stocked medical library which wa rare in mental hospitals of the time and it occasionally hosted clinical conferences for doctors throughout the country.
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In 1959 changing attitudes to mental health lead to a subtle change in the hospitals name, the word mental was dropped from then on it was just Barrow Hospital. The following year 1960 the hospitals population reached a peek of 453 thou it was predicted that new community based care initiatives would lead to a decrease in patient numbers to 200 by 1975. This target was not reached but the new approaches to treatment did see a gradual program of closures at barrow from the 1970's through to the 1990's, as in-patient numbers decreased residential wards were closed and the hospital focused on out patient and community support work. By 2004 only three residential wards remained open at Barrow.
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In 2003 Avon & Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust announced their intention to close Barrow Hospital and transfer its services to new purpose built units in a £ 60 million project, the initial plan was a phased closure to take place by 2008 but in a national survey of hospital cleanliness conducted in 2005 Barrow Hospital was found to be the dirtiest hospital in the country inspectors stated the hospital had "an unacceptably dirty environment". Two of the hospitals three remaining wards were immediately closed and their patients were transfered to other hospitals. The entire hospital closure plan was brought forward, With the final ward emptyed during the summer of 2006.
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Since the hospital closed it had been considered something of a difficult site to visit, Onsite security and the frequent presence of police dogs in training made accessing the site a bit of a challenge. Local explorers Rigsby, Rookinella and Tumbles had made some successful night time visits to barrow early in 2008 so when a group fellow members of 28dayslater found ourselves in Bristol a large scale daytime visit was quickly arranged. We started out visiting the the Southside building which housed four wards and a day hospital. Southside was one of the first buildings at Barrow to be closed and shows all the classic signs of a derelict building peeling paint hangs from the walls and the atmosphere reeks of damp. Southside has been well stripped very little remained in the wards apart from a disused Hydrotherapy bath and the drug cupboards in Wards 5's pharmacy. However as we entered the day hospital in the central block we encountered an almost complete dentists, with two dental chairs, lamp, drill control block and the spittoon. Not far from here was small chapel of rest with a wooden catafalque, We hoped an adjoining room would house the hospitals mortuary but all that lay beyond the heavy wooden door was a single column mortuary fridge.
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Leaving Southside behind we moved around the hospitals eastern edge stopping briefly for a quick look at one of the outlying ward buildings and the steam tunnels which linked the hospital buildings together and distributed power and hot water from the hospitals boiler house. The Tunnels are now the home to a colony of bats so we left them in peace and continued onto the next large building in the complex the Alexandria Unit named after princess Alexandria. The Alexandria unit was one of the last parts of the hospital to close and is in much better condition than Southside, although it is equally stripped of hospital remnants. The Alexandria unit was a mixed sex unit housing patients in single rooms and communal dorms with partition walls to give residents a little privacy. There are separate bathing facility's which are the most complete rooms within Alexandria both baths still have relatively new lifting hoists still in place.
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After completing out tour of the Alexandria Unit we decided to miss out the rest of the hospitals residential units and set of towards the tall aluminum chimney of the boiler house. The boiler house was the heart of the hospital pumping hot water for the heating systems and electricity all around the hospital through the network of steam tunnels. The Boiler house was immaculate and extremely clean inside hardly abandoned at all, though all around it the brambles and bushes have grown thickly making approaching it quite a ramble. Not far from the boiler house lies a smaller square building which is quite unassuming apart from a a boarded tall arched window on one of its walls. We carefully entered this building and found ourselves in a small anti room ahead a fine wooden door was inlayed with "Chapel" marked in gold leaf letters, we knew we were in the Hospitals Mortuary building tucked away on the edge of the site and not marked on the hospital map. A second wooden door lead into a square room with a slight concaved floor in the center of which was a circle of fresh concrete filling the drain and base where the mortuary slab would once have stood the mortuary was empty now. A second empty room was beyond this probably the mortuary office's another door in this room completed the circuit of the Mortuary building leading back in to the chapel of rest which was dominated by a simple stained glass window displaying a dark red cross. After leaving the mortuary building our time at Barrow came to an end, retracing out steps back to Southside we quietly slipped un noticed back out of the hospital grounds.