This used to be Our Lady’s Hospital, a psychiatric facility built in the 1840s and formerly known as Cork District Lunatic Asylum. The last patients were moved out as late as 2002. According to reports, few renovations had been made between the time of opening in 1850 and its closure. And for almost the entirety of this period people were being forced into institutions for nothing, and the treatment of the patients was shameful beyond belief.
Anyway. It is an incredible building, the longest in Ireland (or it used to be, anyway). And to my sorrow it has now been converted into apartments - the website for which, unsurprisingly, makes no mention of the terrible history of the place.
But ever since I first heard about it, first got an inkling of what had happened there, I wanted it to be something else. An arts centre, with studios and a concert hall and writers-in-residence and exhibitions; a community centre with libraries and youth clubs and basketball courts; anything, anything but a series of bland, contemporary fucking living spaces.
I was thirteen when I listed, in my diary, all the things I would do with that building in an attempt to make up for the horrors endured by so many inside it.
I haven’t changed. It, unfortunately, has.
(Photo by slinky2000 on Flickr.)
The history of mental health care is an ugly one. Well said, Bingo.
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