Out of Sight, Out of Mind?
Museum of St Albans
Wednesday 6th - Sunday 31st October 2010
Admission FREE
A group of nurses at Hill End Hospital in 1904.
This exhibition is part of a project that looks at the lives of those who lived and worked at Hill End Hospital and the other five psychiatric hospitals in and around St Albans, with help from funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
'A Teaparty at Napsbury' (1930s). Watercolour painting by Louis Wain, a popular Edwardian artist and former patient at Napsbury Hospital
As well as the exhibition, this project included a performance at Trestle Arts Base, housed in the former chapel of Hill End Hopital. This performance used the words and memories of past patients and staff members to produce a moving glimpse of life in the hospital. There were also school and community workshops lead by local artists which explored what it might have been like to live and work at the hospitals in the past.
Project funding also made it possible to conserve the old Hill End Hospital records, which are held at Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies (HALS). These fully restored documents are now available to view at HALS in Hertford.
Nurses at Hill End Hospital, St Albans, with wounded soldiers in uniform during the Second World War.
The lasting legacy of this project is an interactive community archive website where people can share their memories and photographs of the hospitals. The website is quick and easy to use and an important way to record and preserve the personal and hidden histories of the hospitals that played such large part in local life for so many years.
