Barnsley Hall was the second mental hospital built in Worcestershire under the 1845 County Lunatic Asylums Act, and occupied a large site north of Bromsgrove.
This booklet describes the creation of the hospital and its internal features, and the rather authoritarian regime under its first medical superintendent, Dr Percy Hughes. His successor, Dr Andrew Shepherd, introduced a more liberal regime with an emphasis on occupational therapy. The site played an important role in the Second World War when a large addition was built to look after military casualties, and at its height over 3000 people worked on the site.
Like all similar institutions Barnsley Hall fell victim to the preference for the treatment of the mentally ill in the community, and it closed in 1995.
