Broadmoor Performed: A Theatrical Hospital

Broadmoor Hospital is a problem. Located on the edge of the village of Crowthorne, Berkshire, it is an enduring and intransigent edifice that bears witness to a knotted medical and human history. In the sediments of its 153-year-old frame lie wasted both the humanitarian psychiatric innovations and the cruel barbarities of a period of profound change in mental asylums. Both architecturally and culturally the site is, in some ways, marked: it is a melancholic monument to madness and its chequered past. While almost all other asylums in Britain are closed, Broadmoor Hospital remains. It is, of course, no longer an asylum in either form or purpose. Yet, as indicated above, it is one of the remaining relics of the asylum movement that is still in operation as a long-term facility for mentally distressed men, many of whom, though by no means all, have committed crimes.