History in Your Hands
The aim of this website is to collect the memories of people who lived, worked and were associated with, Meanwood Park Hospital; to produce a digital archive of recollections which will provide a learning resource for future generations.
Many people may feel the need to tell their story ‘before they fall off their perches’.
Others may want to leave a legacy for future generations, a reminder of what life was like in the hospital and how change can and does occur;
Others may wish to leave a tribute for those relatives and friends who lived at the hospital.
For some, it may be the first time people share their memories.
ADD YOUR STORY TO THE ARCHIVE HERE.
Our sister website
High Royds Hospital is testament to the real pleasure which can be found in talking, reminiscing and having a willing ear to bend.
The fact that so much enjoyment can be had while building something so worthwhile is appreciated by many:
“I have searched off and on for years for a site like this, an opportunity to see something that makes some of my memories of living in Linton house real. When I saw some of the pictures it made me cry, seems like a life time ago when I used to spend my time walking around the corridors and chatting to some of the patients in the canteen of the main hospital”
“Thanks for doing this, a really important piece of work- the whole thing would otherwise be lost I fear”
Email at… mark.mdavis@gmail.com
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Growing up in Meanwood in the 70’s, patients from Meanwood Hospital were a fact of life. This was before the days of ‘Care in the Community’ and patients with a wide range of mental disabilities were able to spend time out of the hospital and generally mingle with the population, then return to the hospital for meals and to sleep.
Obviously, this provided an interesting range of ‘characters’ who became friends or foes to us kids. A few that I remember-
Big Leonard – Lenny was a huge ‘boy’. He was about 6 foot 3 and 17 stone when he was 15. He used to tag onto groups of kids which led him into a number of interesting situations! He was still the oldest teenager in meanwood about 15 years later. He’d aged but still liked to be one of the gang.
Hairpuller- He was a middle aged bloke who had a fixation with young lads with fair hair. He used to enjoy giving it a good tug..I know, he got me once! Nowadays, a kid would probably end up in counselling after a hairpuller attack but to us it was no big deal, just something to tell your mates about.
David- David was a gangly man, probably late teens but to us he seemed like a ‘grown up’. His catch phrase was ‘I like football’ and he was a bit like the games teacher in Kes. He’d invade our pitch in meanwood park in a flared suit and smart shoes, take the ball off us and embark on a mazy keeganesque charge towards goal, then unleash an unstoppable shot which would break the imaginary goal net and leave the keeper with a 5 minute walk to retrieve the ball!
There were plenty more and I often wonder what became of them.
Also, in the 70’s the hospital held an annual garden party and they used to usually get a pretty good ‘turn’. I remember Dana appearing one year, The Grumbleweeds (Meanwood lads) played one year and Jimmy Saville often put in an appearence.
The hospital site is all houses now, but I’m sure people who grew up in the area before the 80’s will have a lot of memories of the buildings and patients.
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I remember Meanwood Park Hospital well. I was Miss Britain in 1974 and opened the annual fair that year My Stepdad used to work there as a nurse and I was always a bit scared when I met the patients. Now I know that they were all probably just as scared of the outside world as we were of the inside world.
See photo titled, Engaging Beauty.
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There were an awful lot of patients who weren’t allowed to go outside too. Kids and young people stuck in cots or on mats. I don’t blame the staff in any way as that is how those places were run then, but it was a horrible place for some ‘residents’. Not much in the way of stimulation for the mentally disabled, unlike nowadays. The reason I know this is that my sister was in there from about 67/68 and she was in a ward type place that was for patients who couldn’t get about as well as being mentally handicapped. It smelt and when we went to see her she was usually just laid in a cot or pram.
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We used to have Meanwood Park hydrants on our bi-annual check,and clean charts. Each day a fireman would go off with a check card, of a district whose turn it was. We had a Lambretta scooter fitted with a box sidecar. In this were the tools for the job.Spare hydrant plates, spade, trowel, Standpipe key & bar etc.
One day, Hal W. had the task of doing those in the ‘colony’. At the entrance he met a tidy young man . “Are you come to see the hydrants.?”. “Yes”, replied Hal. “Well I can show you where they all are,” said the young man. So up he climbed on the seat behind Hal, and directed him around the complex. It was only after about 15mins., and the fourth time he was passing the offices, that a window opened. “Gerroff that scooter, yer bug***” yelled a voice.
The lad leapt off and was gone in a flash. Hal, bewildered, was told he, the young man, stops all traffic deliveries etc. and ‘proceeds’ to show them the way.! Apparently he just loved riding around in anything with an engine in it.
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My grandparents worked there when I was a kid and lived in a house, something along the lines of a “tied cottage” just on the edge of the hospital grounds.
The house had orginally been the farm house – anyone who knows the layout of the old hospital will probably remember the farm – and was just behind where the Penny Hill School was built on Tongue Lane.
To me as a kid it seemed a massive house, and we’d go for great long walks through Meanwood Wood(?) or play in the fields alongside. Sometimes you’d bump into a patient out on a walk and they were never a problem.
The wards were housed in seperate buildings, called villas, dotted around the grounds and I can remember that every bonfire night they’d have a massive bonfire and firework display which was always well attended (can you imagine that today at a hospital for the mentally ill? Health and Safety would have a fit!).
It’s all “executive” houses now – I often wonder where all the money the developers paid for the site went. The hospital was part of the NHS so that was our money – we effectively owned it. Same story with High Royds too.
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My parents also worked there for many years, and we lived in one of the “tied cottage” farmhouses for most of the 1970s.
It was an interesting place for a kid to grow up, with the run of the grounds to ride my bike round. I remember a large barn near our house with “mountains” of grit to climb on, and a mortuary at the end of the short path that led from the cottages to the hospital grounds. I was scared of the mortuary as a kid, but would often ride round it on my bike and try (unsuccessfully) to peer through the frosted glass windows and see what was going on onside (probably nothing, but…)
I was gutted when we moved out in the 1970s, but the cottages were really old and infested with mice towards the end of our stay. I think that someone else moved in after us, then the cottages stood empty for a few years and were eventually demolished in the mid 1990s or later.
I have read a lot of bad things about the history and regime at Meanwood Park Hospital, and some of them are probably true. What people tend to forget in the name of a good story is that many of the staff there were dedicated to the welfare of the patients, and would organise holidays and treats at their own initiative with no extra payment for doing so.
The closure of Meanwood Park hospital has been portrayed as a moral and political decision, but it was more to do with selling the land for profit to developers. Residents were placed into the “care” of the community in line with the policy of the time, but long term support was often inadequate. I think there was a least one case around that time of a knife attack on a member of a public by a former resident who was released into “sheltered” housing near Meanwood village.
I also heard (though cannot prove it) that some of the relatives of the residents would not be seen for 20 years, and then would turn up when the resident died and claim the benefit money that the resident had accumulated over that time…
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Im a staff nurse at LGI hospital and lived in one of the apartments for a year on Lawson Wood Drive, on the Woodleas built on the grounds of Meanwood Park Hospital.
My flat mate and I always used to wonder what the big old house in the centre of the development is?? It often has cars outside, lights on within but smashed windows that have been like that for years!
I also cared for a male patient about a year ago now who was a previous patient of Meanwood Park. He would tell some horrific stories of the ‘care’ in practice. This was after a good six months of us gaining his trust as he was that frightened of females in uniform.
As you say probably the norm for the era though.
Any ideas on the big stately home in the centre of the development??
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Please email me with any comments at mark.mdavis@gmail.com
