History of Place

Maison Dieu or ‘House of God’ in Faversham, Kent is one of many medieval monasteries that also acted as a hospital for the sick. It was commissioned by Henry III in 1234 and was also on  the pilgrim road to Canterbury, followed by many seeking physical or spiritual healing. Records show that hospitals also housed disabled people either as monks and nuns or hospital residents.

Edward Rushton, himself blinded at sea as a young man, founds the Liverpool School for the Indigent Blind. Blind people without means were often beggars and badly treated: Rushton’s school allowed blind people to learn a trade and live dignified lives. It was the first such institution in Britain.

The Royal School for Deaf Children was founded in 1792, the first public institution to provide a free education for this group.  It opened a branch in Margate in 1876 and moved entirely from London to Margate in 1905, so pupils could benefit from the sea air.

Dr John Langdon Down opened Normansfield Hospital for the care of people with learning disabilities – Down’s Syndrome is named after him. He built an ornate theatre in the grounds of the hospital, as part of a plan to ‘provide the highest possible culture’ and ‘the best physical, moral and intellectual training’ to residents.

Chiswick House Asylum.  The Tuke brothers ran the 18^th century Palladian mansion, Chiswick House, as a private asylum from 1892 – 1928 for those with mental illness. Some residents stayed for a few weeks, others for decades.

The Guild of the Brave Poor Things was a social club which opened in Bristol for people with disabilities.  The Victorian sentimentality and aura of pity and tragedy in the name was disliked by the members themselves, who changed it in 1917 to the Guild of the Handicapped.  But for almost a century, the club offered a strong sense of community and survived in various forms until the late 1980s, by which time it had been increasingly replaced by other social structures.

St Saviour’s Deaf Church.  A church for deaf people had existed in London since the 1870s, and symbolised the equal place of deaf people in church and society.  With the building of St Saviour’s – the only purpose built deaf church – in Acton in 1925, the community both underlined its mature development, and created a space exactly architecturally tailored to deaf experience. It closed in 2014, but the congregation continue to meet at other sites.

Grove Road Housing Scheme, Sutton in Ashfield.  Institutions often served deaf and disabled people well through the centuries and, at their best, allowed for fulfilling lives. But they could also be places of imprisonment and infantilisation away from the world.  Disabled activists Ken and Maggie Davies were the first to generate a model allowing disabled people to live in the community.  At Grove Road Housing Scheme non-disabled people received free housing in exchange for supporting the needs of  disabled residents. The creation of Grove Road marked the beginning of the Independent Living Movement.