Site icon Inside Croydon

Remembering the asylum: plaque unveiling and book launch

insidecroydon

There’s an unveiling of a green heritage plaque and a book launch going on in Tooting this afternoon, to commemorate “the thousands of lives lived” at the site of the old Tooting Bec Asylum.

There’s hardly a trace of the old mental hospital today, where people were treated – many virtually incarcerated – between 1903 and its closure in 1995.

The site today is known as the Heritage Park Estate, comprising dozens of modern houses and flats. Residents of the estate have been researching the asylum’s history.

Wandsworth Council has agreed to erect a Green Plaque at the estate to remember the hospital, its residents and staff.

The Green Plaque will be unveiled at 2pm. Part of the original wall to the asylum is still there, by the pedestrian entrance to the Heritage Park Estate at the corner of Tooting Bec Road and Franciscan Road.

And Tooting History Group is publishing a book to record the history of the hospital to coincide with the unveiling: Tooting Bec Asylum Remembered 1903-1995 by Karen Ellis-Rees and Annie Caulfield, who will be at the Pavilion to the rear of the Tooting Lido car park from 3pm. Copies of the book are available for £5.

In 1983, Inside Croydon’s Editor, Steven Downes, interviewed Tom Richards, the winner of the 1948 Olympic marathon silver medal. Richards had worked for many years as an orderly or porter at Tooting Bec Asylum, including when he was a leading international road racer in the 1930s through to the early ’50s. In 1985, Downes’s grandfather, William John Downes, aged 86, died while in care at Tooting Bec Hospital.

Inside Croydon – If you want real journalism, delivering real news, from a publication that is actually based in the borough, please consider paying for it. Sign up today: click here for more details

PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, as featured on Google News Showcase, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates


Exit mobile version