Talgarth Hospital Records

(B/H/2)

The Mid Wales Hospital, originally the Brecon and Radnor Joint Counties Lunatic Asylum was a psychiatric hospital in Talgarth.  It was officially opened on 18 March 1903. 

As well as residential wards, the hospital had a large recreation and dining hall, kitchens, and workshops in which the patients were encouraged to spend their time profitably. These include a tailor, bakery, shoe-maker and printing shops as well as 8 acres of market gardens. Able-bodied patients worked on the agricultural estate to produce food for the hospital.

Like other contemporary institutions, the asylum was designed to be self-sufficient, and had its own private water, electricity, heating and sewerage systems

Our records show that the first patients at the hospital were admissions mainly from the Brecon area but numbers also arrived from towns further afield such as Swansea and Shrewsbury. 

Although initially intended to cater for 352 patients, by the end of 1925 there were 455, stretching the resources to the limit.  Some of this overcrowding was attributed to World War One and the effect that it was to have on many men who served in the battles

A complete series of patients’ records survive from 1903 to the 1970s.  Most poignant are the deaths and discharge registers which record a detailed medical history of each individual, and a photograph of when they were admitted. 

Many patients are recorded as having epilepsy, syphilis, and suffering from alcoholism.  Others were unmarried mothers, some were simply blind and deaf.  It is clear from the records that many patients spent numerous years in Talgarth, eventually becoming institutionalised and unable to return to normal society.

The hospital closed in 2000 and shortly afterwards Powys Archives rescued a large collection of records from the building before it was sold.