Ridge Lea Hospital | History LEFT TO ROT

This annex of the nearby Lancaster Moor Hospital was opened in 1916 as a Ladies Villa, intended for lucrative private lady patients who required superior accommodation compared with that available in the main Lancaster Moor Hospital.

Lancaster Moor hospital opened in 1816 and closed for mental health patients in 1991. This impressive building still exists today and is now converted into private apartments for members of the public.

Meanwhile back at Ridge Lea, this structure formed another sizeable complex in it’s own right and stood some distance west of the Lancaster Moor Hospital, accessed separately from it’s own approaches from Stone Row Head alongside the Lancaster Cemetery.

The hospital was a pioneering site for the humane treatment of the mentally ill with the introduction of treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy.
This is a psychiatric treatment where a generalised seizure (without muscular convulsions) is electrically induced to manage refractory mental disorders.

up to 120 volts are applied externally to the patient's head, which results in around 800 milliamps of direct current passing through the brain, for short periods of time. This was used as a treatment for several mental disorders including mania and depression.

Ridge Lea Hospital first saw a decline in patients after the 1986 publication 'Making a Reality of Community Care' by the Audit Commission. This report outlined the slow progress in resettling people from long stay hospitals. It was this report which prompted the subsequent Green and White papers on community care.

Care in the Community is a British policy of deinstitutionalisation, treating and caring for physically and mentally disabled people in their homes rather than in an institution such as Ridge Lea Hospital.

British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher adopted a new policy of care in the community and subsequent governments harmonised this.

Ridge Lea Hospital closed in 2013 and is still owned by Lancashire and South Cumbria National Health Service Trust.


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