Could waste ground hold graves of former mental patients?

2:14pm Tuesday 6th November 2007

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AN overgrown and untended patch of waste ground in St Albans appears to contain the unmarked graves of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of former mental patients.

Pamela Harding, who travelled from Wales on Monday in a search for the remains of her grandmother, Bertha Day, was horrified by the poor state of the former Hill End Hospital cemetery.

Only a handful of gravestones are visible, and the land is overgrown with weeds and besmirched by discarded beer cans.

She said: "I feel awful - Bertha had an awful life, and she was just dumped in the hospital for years.

"Now it seems she has been dumped on since. It is disgusting.

"I wanted to put some flowers on her grave, but it is just a wilderness.

"I am sure other people will want to know where their relatives are.

"There should be a plan somewhere.

"I am sure she is there somewhere, but where?"

The former cemetery off Hill End Road, opposite Russet Drive, is extremely difficult to find, and a sign which presumably once told visitors about the many former patients and staff buried there is blank.

Mrs Harding saw little sign the site was cared for in any way, and even a seat is broken.

The Highfield Park Trust, which took over the land when most of the hospital site was developed for housing in the 1990's, claims most of the graves had already been removed.

But according to the Hertfordshire Partnership Trust, which runs local mental health services, most of the graves were marked not by headstones but by small stone plaques, which have become overgrown.

Director of the Highfield Park Trust John Ely told the Review: "Former patients and members of staff were buried there from about 1900.

"When we took over the area, we found six gravestones in one corner.

"We have not come across any marker plaques.

"The ground was very disturbed, and my theory is that the graves were exhumed, but we have not been able to prove that."

But the Home Office has told Mrs Harding that no licence to authorise exhumations was ever issued.

She has also contacted St Albans Museum and the county council archive service in unsuccessful requests for more information.

Mrs Harding's grandmother Bertha Day lived in Ware with her husband and four children, but was committed to Hill End in 1921, living there until her death in 1933.

It seems her husband, who may have caused her insanity by giving her syphilis, refused to acknowledge her existence, and Mrs Harding's mother grew up believing she had died in a road accident.

Mrs Harding, who lives near Welshpool, Powys, hopes anyone with information will contact her at kishamba@talktalk.net or on 01938 556230.