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1956, 2006: Not everyone in a mental asylum was supposed to be there…
The Key
What you need to know before your trail
1956
It’s Ellen Crosby’s first day as a student nurse at Ambergate County Lunatic Asylum. When she meets a young woman committed by her father, and a pioneering physician keen to try out the various ‘cures’ for mental illness, little does Ellen know that a choice she will make is to change all their lives for ever…
2006
Sarah is drawn to the abandoned Ambergate Asylum. Whilst exploring the old corridors she discovers a suitcase belonging to a female patient who was admitted fifty years earlier. The shocking contents lead Sarah to unravel a forgotten story of tragedy, lost love and an old wrong that only she may have the power to put right .
Travel Guide
Ambergate
Fictional but we are told that Ambergate has been built to care for 100 patients from the Manchester, Liverpool and Chester areas. By the 1950s it housed over 1500. It closed its doors in 1997. It is based on the real former asylum of Denbigh in Wales:
The author travelled to the former asylum as part of her research. It finally closed its doors to patients in 1995 but the building still stands abandoned and waiting development. In 1845, a law was passed requiring all countries to build mental asylums by the end of the century to look after their most vulnerable. By the 1950a, one in three families would admit a family member to such a place for the most bizarre and spurious of reasons. The buildings themselves of many of the former asylums have been left abandoned and so as in the book, Sarah would indeed have been able to wander the corridors, see the huge doors, mental bars and imagine the conditions that these people would have endured.
More information can be found here: countyasylums.co.uk
As for the story with the suitcases, this was inspired by a facility in New York. The Willard Asylum closed in 1995 and a set of four hundred suitcases was found belonging to former patients who had surrendered them to the asylum when they were admitted. Find out about this story here suitcaseexhibit.org/
Ambergate
” She’d been coming to Ambergate for month now, but every time she rounded the corner and the stunning building came into view, the sheer grandeur of it made her gasp. She’s seen stately homes less well- appointed. Constructed from the finest limestone, the face appeared lavish, pretentious even, the octagonal cupola of the clock tower rising majestically over the arched doorway”
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Key
Destination : England Author/Guide: Kathryn Hughes Departure Time: 1956, 2006
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