Last week I discovered that my grandma has a map of Gateshead from 1877, and so I thought I'd have a look to see if I could find the house I grew up in.
It turns out it wasn't yet built (it would be just under where the 520 is on the map), but something that was nearby that I didn't know about was Gateshead High Fell Lunatic Asylum.
I knew there had been an asylum nearby, just not quite that close!
Sourmilk Hill as it is today
After the asylum was demolished the churchyard appears to have been extended (possibly twice if you look at the lines in the grass), and an awful lot more buildings (including my parent's house) have been built, but a lot of the roads remain the same so it's fairly easy to see where the asylum would have been.
I took to google to see what I could find about the asylum and found out that the painter John Martin's brother, Jonathan had been an inmate there after threatening to shoot Edward Legge, The Bishop of Oxford.
There is some more super interesting information on Gateshead High Fell Lunatic Asylum here
No comments:
Post a Comment