Sunnyside Mental Hospital

Sunnyside Hospital
Sunnyside Asylum, Christchurch. Completed in 1891, this was one of Mountfort's last major works. Designed in a chateauesque Gothic, the large windows created the air of a country house rather than place of incarceration.
Geography
Location	Christchurch, Canterbury Region, New Zealand
Coordinates	43°33′03″S 172°35′34″E / 43.5509°S 172.5929°E / -43.5509; 172.5929Coordinates: 43°33′03″S 172°35′34″E / 43.5509°S 172.5929°E / -43.5509; 172.5929
Services
Emergency department	No
History
Founded	1863
Closed	1999
Links
Lists	Hospitals in New Zealand

Sunnyside Hospital (1863-1999) was the first mental asylum to be built in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was initially known as Sunnyside Lunatic Asylum, and its first patients were 17 people who had previously been kept in the Lyttelton gaol. In 2007, Hilmorton Hospital is just one of the mental health services that are based on the old Sunnyside Hospital grounds.

Sunnyside was primarily designed by the New Zealand Victorian Gothic architect, Benjamin Mountfort, with an administration building designed by John Campbell.

Edward William Seagar was the first superintendent of Sunnyside Hospital.

In 1995, four years before the hospital's closure, nurses walked off the job because of dangerous working conditions.

[Mrs R. said it would] be a good idea for me to admit myself as a voluntary boarder to Sunnyside Mental Hospital where there was a new electric treatment, which, in her opinion, would help me. . . . I woke toothless and was admitted to Sunnyside Hospital and I was given the new electric treatment, and suddenly my life was thrown out of focus. I could not remember. I was terrified.