DYKEBAR HOSPITAL ~ JOURNEYS AND PATHWAYS

Acute Unit Research and Consultation

Artist Jane Kelly

Consultation has focused largely on very specifi c discussions with staff across a wide range of frequently shifting agendas currently operating at Dykebar Hospital. Consultation also provided an introduction to the profound changes that have occurred during the recent and not so recent working lives at the hospital. This is poignantly relevant around the rich agricultural and horticultural history of the site, particularly in relation to the therapeutic activities once an integral part of clinical care.



Research
The hospital opened in 1909 as the Renfrew District Asylum on the rural edge of Paisley. The large detached sandstone villas, which made up the institution were connected by a network of roads. On completion of construction, half of the resident male patients were employed over a number of years “putting the grounds in order”. The hospital also acquired two adjacent farms and their fi elds on which the patients raised cows, pigs and poultry and grew potatoes and turnips. They also built and operated a vegetable garden, glass houses, seed beds and potting sheds. They created and ran tennis courts, a bowling green and an aviary. None of these facilities survive.



In the Asylum’s Annual Reports, Members of the Lunacy Board repeatedly made positive assessment of patient health, wellbeing and progress. Activities were often defi ned in line with gender roles of the period. Female patients worked in the kitchens preparing food produced by the farms, gardens and greenhouses. They also worked in the laundry, and as dressmakers – and rolled the tennis court turf. Frequent mention is made in the Reports of the high quality and quantity of food provided and that the nutrition allowed many patients to gain healthy weight.

Throughout the early and mid 1900s, within the limits of institutional confinement, a rich cultural life evolved – of weekly winter dances with music provided by staff, bowling and tennis matches, concerts, fi lms, football clubs and Sunday services.



For male patients, the Reports state that “there is nothing better than outside occupation in the open air”, and combined with plenty of “rest in bed” gave best treatment results without use of “restraint or seclusion”. The men built and worked a vegetable garden of 2.5 acres after which farms were acquired to provide “remunerative employment” in the form of an acre per male. One Report concludes that the activity “is serving its purpose, not only as a means of supplying the asylum with farm produce and as an outlet for the labour of the patients, but in the interest it creates. The fact that the surrounding land is our own, and farmed by our own people, rounds off in a way unfelt before, the life of the Asylum Community”.