#3 Ewell Epileptic Colony
Ewell Epileptic Colony Epsom Cluster #3
- Opened: 1 July 1903
- Closed: 2009
- Architect: William Charles Clifford Smith
- Original authority: London County Council
- Original capacity: 326 patients – 266 men and 60 women
- Original site: approximately 112 acres
- Original name: Ewell Epileptic Colony
- Later names: Ewell Mental Hospital; St Ebba’s Hospital
- Wartime use: Treatment centre for former servicemen, 1918–1927
- Epsom Cluster: No. 3 – the third hospital of the Cluster to open
- Architectural plan: Dispersed colony of detached villas
A different kind of institution
When the Ewell Epileptic Colony opened on 1 July 1903, it differed significantly from the first two institutions established on the Horton Estate.
The Manor and Horton had opened as asylums. The new institution at Ewell was established specifically for people with epilepsy.
Contemporary reporting described it as the first rate-supported epileptic colony in Britain.
That distinction is important. Epileptic colonies already existed, but these had been established through charitable organisations. Ewell represented the London County Council’s attempt to provide such an institution as part of the publicly funded asylum system.
It also followed a different architectural model.
Rather than accommodating hundreds of patients within the wards and corridors of a conventional asylum building, patients lived in smaller detached villas spread across a large estate.
The intention was to create a colony rather than another traditional asylum.
Building the Colony
The London County Council had decided by 1898 to establish a working colony for people with epilepsy on its newly acquired Horton Estate.
Plans were prepared by William Charles Clifford Smith, engineer to the London County Council’s Asylums Committee, who had also been responsible for the first asylum of the Epsom Cluster, the Manor.
The Ewell Epileptic Colony occupied approximately 112 acres in the north-eastern part of the estate.
At its centre were the administrative and service buildings. Around them stood eight detached patient villas, creating a much more dispersed institution than the large connected asylum blocks found elsewhere in the Cluster.
The Colony nevertheless possessed the facilities required to operate as a substantial institution in its own right, including administrative, medical, recreational and service buildings.
A question over the Colney Hatch fire
There is an intriguing – but unresolved – question surrounding the decision to build the Ewell Epileptic Colony in permanent materials.
A later architectural history of Surrey hospitals states that the London County Council had initially intended to provide temporary accommodation for the Colony, but that the proposal was reconsidered following a disastrous fire at Colney Hatch Asylum in north London.
The connection would certainly have been significant.
During the early hours of 27 January 1903, fire swept through temporary wards at Colney Hatch. The buildings were constructed principally of timber and corrugated iron – materials also familiar at the Manor Asylum at Epsom – and 52 female patients died.
The disaster inevitably raised serious questions about the safety of temporary asylum buildings.
However, there is a problem with attributing the permanent construction of the Ewell Colony directly to the fire.
The dates do not fit comfortably.
Plans for the permanent Ewell Epileptic Colony had already been prepared by William Charles Clifford Smith in 1900, some three years before the Colney Hatch fire. The Colony itself opened only five months after the disaster, on 1 July 1903.
It would therefore be misleading to state as fact that the 1903 fire caused the London County Council to abandon temporary buildings and construct the Ewell Colony in permanent materials. The surviving chronology indicates that plans for permanent buildings were already in existence.
What can be established is that the two episodes belonged to the same period in London County Council asylum history. At Epsom, the first hospital of the Cluster – the Manor – had opened in 1899 with patients housed largely in supposedly temporary timber-framed, corrugated-iron pavilions. At Ewell, the new Colony opened four years later with substantial permanent villas.
Between them came one of the worst disasters in British asylum history, when fire destroyed temporary wards at Colney Hatch and 52 patients lost their lives. Whether that tragedy directly altered the plans for Ewell remains uncertain.
Eight villas and 326 patients
The Colony was originally designed to accommodate 326 patients – 266 men and 60 women.
The principal patient accommodation was provided in detached villas, several of which accommodated 38 patients.
These were permanent, substantial buildings rather than the corrugated-iron patient wards used for the supposedly temporary Manor Asylum nearby.
The villas varied in their external treatment. Some were constructed in red brick with artificial-stone dressings, while others were rendered. The buildings had tiled roofs and were provided with electric lighting.
Telephones connected the different buildings, while an electrical fire-alarm system linked the villas with the centre.
The central complex provided the administrative and service functions necessary to operate the Colony, together with infirmary and recreational accommodation.
The estimated cost of the buildings, fixtures, fittings and equipment was £98,000, equivalent to approximately £300 for each patient place, excluding the cost of the land.
A royal opening
The new institution was formally opened on Wednesday, 1 July 1903, by Princess Louise, Duchess of Fife, accompanied by the Duke of Fife.
The event was reported only days later in the British Medical Journal, providing a valuable contemporary account of the new institution and its intended purpose.
The journal described Ewell as:
“the first rate-supported epileptic colony in this country”
Its opening marked another stage in the rapid transformation of the Horton Estate.
Within four years of the Manor receiving its first patients, three large London County Council institutions were operating at Epsom – but Ewell had been deliberately designed to fulfil a different role from its neighbours.
Charles Hubert Bond
The Colony’s first Medical Superintendent was Dr Charles Hubert Bond.
Bond had previously worked at Banstead and Bexley asylums and had experience at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic.
He became Medical Superintendent at Ewell when the Colony opened in 1903 and remained there until 1907.
That year he moved only a short distance across the Horton Estate to become the first Medical Superintendent of Long Grove Asylum, the fourth hospital of the Epsom Cluster.
Bond’s career subsequently extended far beyond Epsom. He became a Commissioner in Lunacy and later served as a Commissioner of the Board of Control, placing him among the significant figures in British mental-health administration during the early twentieth century.
Work and life within the Colony
Work was an important part of the original colony system.
The early plans particularly envisaged male patients undertaking agricultural and other useful work on the estate.
This reflected contemporary medical and institutional thinking. Structured occupation was regarded as beneficial for some patients, while the labour of patients also contributed to the operation of institutions that required considerable manpower to maintain their farms, grounds, kitchens, laundries and other services.
The model therefore combined accommodation, treatment, work and recreation within the same institutional environment.
For the patients themselves, it meant that many aspects of everyday life took place within the boundaries of the Colony and the wider Horton Estate.
The Colony expands
Ewell did not remain at its original size for long.
In 1909, two additional villas were constructed and capacity increased to 429 patients.
Further development followed during the succeeding decades.
The original colony of eight villas therefore became the nucleus of a substantially larger hospital, although its dispersed layout continued to distinguish the site from the more imposing asylum complexes elsewhere on the Horton Estate.
A new role after the First World War
The First World War brought a dramatic change in the Colony’s purpose.
From 1918 until January 1927, the institution was administered by the Ministry of Pensions and used for the treatment of former servicemen suffering from neurological and psychological conditions associated with their wartime service.
Contemporary diagnoses included neurasthenia, a term then used for a range of symptoms which could include physical and mental exhaustion, anxiety, headaches and disturbed sleep.
For almost nine years, therefore, an institution established specifically for people with epilepsy served a very different population.
The hospital was returned to London County Council control in February 1927.
Ewell Mental Hospital
Following its return to the London County Council, the institution developed as a mental hospital and became known as Ewell Mental Hospital.
A significant change in mental-health legislation followed with the Mental Treatment Act 1930.
Among its provisions, the Act enabled voluntary treatment in public mental hospitals. Patients could therefore seek admission for treatment without necessarily entering through the older certification process.
The villa arrangement at Ewell was considered suitable for voluntary patients, and the hospital continued to expand during the 1930s.
By 1938 it had 933 beds – almost three times the capacity of the original Colony.
That year also brought another change.
The name Ewell Mental Hospital disappeared.
In its place came the name by which the institution would be known for the remainder of its life.
St Ebba’s Hospital
In 1938, Ewell Mental Hospital became St Ebba’s Hospital.
By then, the small specialist colony which had opened with 326 places in 1903 had developed into a much larger hospital.
Its purpose had changed substantially too.
It had begun as a pioneering publicly funded colony specifically for people with epilepsy, spent almost nine years treating former servicemen following the First World War, and subsequently developed into a mental hospital accepting voluntary as well as other patients.
The creation of the National Health Service in 1948 brought another major change, with St Ebba’s becoming part of the NHS.
During the second half of the twentieth century its role continued to evolve, including an increasing association with the care of people with learning disabilities.
The language used to describe those patients has itself changed considerably. Terms routinely employed by institutions and legislation during the twentieth century would be regarded as inappropriate today.
The end of St Ebba’s
During the later twentieth century, Britain progressively moved away from the model of large institutions providing long-term residential care.
St Ebba’s patient population declined as services moved towards smaller residential settings and care within the community.
The hospital finally closed in 2009, more than a century after the Ewell Epileptic Colony had opened.
Much of the former hospital site was subsequently redeveloped, although parts of the historic complex survived.
Its place within the history of the Epsom Cluster remains distinctive.
The Manor had begun as a temporary response to London’s urgent need for additional asylum accommodation. Horton was a vast purpose-built asylum designed for around 2,000 patients.
Ewell represented another idea.
It was established as a specialist colony in which people with epilepsy lived in smaller villas distributed across an extensive estate. Over the following century its buildings would remain while its name, patients and purpose changed around them.
From the Colony to Horton Cemetery
Buildings and institutions, however, tell only part of this history.
Behind the statistics were individual people.
Thousands passed through Ewell Epileptic Colony, Ewell Mental Hospital and St Ebba’s during more than a century of operation. Some remained within institutional care for many years. Some died there.
For those without family arrangements or another place of burial, Horton Cemetery became the final destination.
There they joined patients from the other hospitals of the Epsom Cluster.
Today, the surviving burial records allow the Friends of Horton Cemetery to recover something that the institutional histories alone cannot provide: their names and their individual stories.
The Colony opened in 1903 with places for 326 patients.
Those patients were counted in beds, villas and annual reports.
At Horton Cemetery, we can begin to remember them as people.