Mary Dearth
Mary talks about patients having a role at Brookwood

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We would sit outside in the sun and look at this big field with blocks of concrete, like headstones. None of us were going to make the effort and walk over and find out what they were but we used to sit there dreaming up these stories that they were headstones, they were people who died in Brookwood and it must have been a cemetery at one point and it was one of the headstones that was left over. This went on for quite a while and when we walked over there, it was the water hydrant.  

And it seemed as though even the wildlife felt safe there because you could sit and watch the rabbits and the deer and foxes and you could almost put your hand out and feed them. It felt such a safe peaceful place to be.

The actual main Florence House - it looked just like any other asylum: there was the big clock tower and as we walked in, it was quite dirty and dingy. It was understandable why they wanted them to close. The walls were always painted yellow - do they call it hospital yellow or something? - or green floors, and everywhere smelt; just decaying buildings really. It was quite dirty and grubby. It must have been so difficult to keep clean because of all these corridors and cubby holes, big staircase upstairs to a couple of wards up there. One of them was called a Rehabilitation Ward. It’s questionable what sort of rehabilitation went on, there was nothing there to try and help people learn any kind of life skills like cooking; there was the tv and chairs in lines against the walls. 

I met an interesting chap there who’d been there. He must have been there from quite a young age, because he remembered when Brookwood had a farm and he used to look after the cows. It was quite difficult to understand his speech but what he was telling me, the crux of the story was how he enjoyed being there and he used to enjoy going out and working on the farm and then they closed the farm and he said, ‘Look at me now, I sit here all day, smoking cigarettes and watching telly. I’d rather be out working on a farm, why can’t I go and work on a farm?’ To me that was the kind of essence, that was the sort of rehabilitation that was being done. People… he felt as though he had a role and a function and that he was performing at something, he was out in the fresh air, he was fit, that’s what he said, about how fit he felt and he was very overweight and just covered in nicotine and ash.