So this is what happened to St Jude’s … the City of Glasgow District Asylum for Pauper Lunatics.

In the early 1990’s, BBC Scotland made a drama series about a DJ, Eddie McKenna, who went to work at a hospital radio station. It was set in Glasgow, as most Scottish TV programmes seem to be, and its six episodes introduced a variety of patients who helped Eddie to keep the asylum’s station on air. They displayed the symptoms of various conditions – bipolar disorder, depression, OCD and schizophrenia – but the over-arching theme of “Takin Over the Asylum” was that people in the outside world were more troubled then those in the institution. As they got involved with broadcasting, the patients’ conditions went into remission – but Eddie’s alcoholism got worse and worse. There’s a moral in there somewhere … perhaps about the benefits of occupational therapy, or maybe the equilibrium of sanity …


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Gartloch was one of Glasgow’s peripheral district asylums, and lies on the north-eastern edge of the city, beyond the sprawling Easterhouse estate, Gartcosh steelworks, and the Bar-L. Having decided to abandon their old asylum close to the city centre, the Glasgow Lunacy Board bought the former Gartloch estate in the late 1880’s, and ran an architectural competition to find a designer for a new building. The winning scheme came from Thomson & Sandilands. Being premiated was their break into the big time, but that should have come as little surprise, because John Thomson was the son of “Greek” Thomson, probably the best architect Glasgow has produced. Thomson junior inherited the architecture gene, and Gartloch’s buildings are as dramatic as that of any British asylum – even in the state they’ve reached today. The grandeur of Gartloch’s hall, sometimes ascribed to Sandilands, also owes something to Thomson senior’s feel for striking colour, and his determination to design radical buildings.


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After the competition was won in November 1889, Thomson & Sandilands prepared a beautiful set of working drawings, and supervised Gartloch’s construction from 1892 to 1896. They went on to design Stobhill Hospital on Balornock Road, so oviously left behind a happy client once Gartloch was complete. Built from deep red Locharbriggs sandstone, the asylum opened fully in 1897, providing 540 beds and marking a great step forwards for mental healthcare. Gartloch’s plan was advanced for its time: the eight main buildings linked by fully-glazed corridors are a step in the evolution of the asylum from the echelon layout to the colony plan. Another important feature introduced at Gartloch for the first time in a British asylum was an independent “hospital” section (rather than the traditionally more limited infirmary wing), used to treat medical conditions such as infectious diseases. However, the most remarkable facet of its architecture is Gartloch’s central building: its transverse hall with a thrust stage is unique.


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By 1902, a TB sanatorium had been built in the grounds, and Gartloch gradually expanded to over 1000 patients as the century wore on. In WW2, it became an Emergency Medical Services (EMS) hospital. which helped to deal with the heavy casualties from the Clydebank Blitz. Afterwards, it returned to being an asylum, and on its vesting to the NHS in 1948, it became the responsibility of the Glasgow North-Eastern Mental Hospitals board. Unusually, Gartloch retained its medical unit until the mid-1960’s, after which it was used purely as a long-stay mental hospital. That came to end in the 1990’s, as the Care in the Community review shut down Glasgow’s peripheral asylums … In 1994, when “Takin Over the Asylum” was shot at Gartloch, it was still a working hospital, although most of the long-stay patients had been moved elsewhere. Its working life spanned exactly a century: but on its 100th birthday in 1996, the NHS killed the institution. St Jude’s, as it was called in the TV series, is very different today.


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So begins the morality tale … The NHS trust in charge of Greater Glasgow’s asylums recognised Gartloch was valuable – 2346 Gartloch Road lies on the edge of the city, amongst woodlands and overlooking the Bishop’s Loch – so they began courting property developers. That process took several years, but the asylum was bought by Bishoploch Developments, who formed “New City Vision” in 2002 with a contractor and another developer in 2002. The NHS counted their receipts, and happily washed their hands of the responsibility to secure it from the ravages of the Easterhouse Young Team. Work began in 2003, when the linking corridors were demolished, then there was a pause of two years while new houses were built in the grounds, supposedly to pay for renovating the existing buildings. Half of Gartloch’s buildings were converted into flats … then work ground to a halt. The Slump …


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Dawn was creeping acros the sky. Gartloch is ringed with streetlights and parked cars, but while the heavily-mortgaged flat dwellers slept on, we picked our way through crates of junk and reached the admin block. The asylum exists in a state of suspended animation – its two pivotal buildings, the rec. hall and admin., are empty shells which the developer (bust? liquidated? bored?) has abandoned and left open to the weather. First off, we scaled one of the pinnacled French Renaissance-style towers. There are two of these blackened sandstone fingers, jabbing towards the sky above the admin block – but the buildings below are completely stripped. A few minutes later, from the top of the tower, the site was laid out at our feet. In fact, the seven-storey towers are missing their spires (which were removed around 1940) – they once soared to ten storeys. From here, we looked down onto the roof of the hall …


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Where next we found ourselves inside. It’s easy to spend a long time there, gazing upwards. Despite appearances, the floor is solid enough, its battens studded with smiddy-made nails, and the spaces between packed with ash pugging. The real glory lies overhead – the delicate fibrous plasterwork around the proscenium; the pilasters which mark out the five bay length of the hall; the blue electroliers still suspended from the ceiling, and the barrel vault itself, with heavily-moulded coffers. The colours alone are glorious – sky blue, maroon, gilt, cream and armorial green – but it’s a wonder they have survived this long. Directly under the recreation hall lies the former dining hall, which was latterly used as a staff dining room, and has had a new structure inserted into it at some point. It’s a dramatic ruin now, though. Perhaps the moral of Gartloch is that greedy developers shouldn’t begin what they can’t complete, nor should they be allowed to strangle a great Victorian architect’s work with shoddy people boxes.

Visited with Pincheck, without whose help this wouldn’t have happened.