Friern Hospital

Friern Hospital (formerly Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum) was a psychiatric hospital in Colney Hatch in what is now the London Borough of Barnet. The hospital was built as the second Middlesex County Asylum and was in operation from 1851 to 1993.

At the time of construction, the asylum had 1,250 beds and was the largest and most modern asylum in Europe. At its height Colney Hatch was home to 2,500 mental patients and had the longest corridor in Britain (It would take a visitor more than two hours to walk the wards). For much of the 20th century, its name was synonymous among Londoners with any mental institution.

The asylum was situated on Friern Barnet Road and is shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1876–1881, which also marks Colney Hatch Park in the area centred on Springfield Road in New Southgate, in the London Borough of Enfield, although the hospital was located further west in what is now generally called Friern Barnet, in the London Borough of Barnet. It was close to the Great Northern Railway and had its own railway station.

Originally plans were made for the new asylum to be built near to the existing 1st Middlesex County Asylum at Hanwell on ground on the other side of the Grand Union Canal and a large piece of land was purchased for this purpose. However, these plans were never realised and the present site was selected instead, perhaps due to the number of other asylums already in the area.

The architect was Samuel Daukes, whose Italianate corridor-plan design was based on the advice of John Conolly, the superintendent of the 1st Middlesex Asylum. The foundation stone was laid by the Prince Consort in 1849, and the building was completed in November 1850. The cost of building had been estimated at £150,000, but the final cost actually proved to be £300,000, making it the most expensive asylum ever built, at £240 per bed. The estate had its own water supply, a chapel, cemetery and a 75-acre farm estate. It also had a gasworks, brewery, and an aviary where canaries were bred.

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