| Located At | Staffordshire Record Office |
| Level | Collection |
| Doc Ref No | 488, D5456, D5584, D5633, 7370, 7785 |
| Title | Records of Burntwood County Asylum, later St Matthew's Hospital, Burntwood |
| Description | The County Asylum at Burntwood opened on December 20th 1864. It was the second County Asylum to be built, the first at Stafford (later St George's Hospital) had been opened in 1818. The architect of the original building was William Lambie Moffatt (1807-1882) of Edinburgh. The chapel was consecrated for divine service in 1900.
The patient accommodation expanded when new male and female wards were built, 1897-8 and further development took place in the 1930s. During the First World War patients were transferred to Burntwood from Rubery Hill Asylum, Worcestershire and Berrywood Asylum, Northamptonshire, both of which were taken over as military hospitals. From 1940-1947 the hospital took emergency military and civilian patients, including soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk. During this period it was called Burntwood Mental and Emergency Hospital. In 1948 Burntwood Asylum was transferred to the National Health Service and was renamed St Matthew's Hospital. The hospital closed in 1995 and the site used for a housing development.
This collection is strong both for administrative and patient records. The former include minutes of various committees up to the early 1960s, and the latter include admission registers and full patient case notes. The hospital had its own cemetery, consecrated in 1867, and there is a complete record of those who were buried there until 1956, when the cemetery closed. The cemetery still exists. Staff records date from 1866 but the fullest records are for the early 20th century. For the building itself there is little from the 1860s but there are plans which show the development of the site and buildings from the 1890s through to the 1970s. |
| AccessNote | Access Restricted |
| Access Conditions | Medical records less than 100 years old are not normally accessible for consultation by the public. Please contact Staffordshire Record Office for further information. |
| Copyright | Any questions concerning the publication of images of documents in this collection should be directed to the County Archivist, Staffordshire Record Office, Eastgate Street, Stafford ST16 2 LZ. |
| Related Material | Patient records up to 1920 have been indexed see: https://www.staffsnameindexes.org.uk
A dataset of information taken from patient records was completed in 2021. For further information see 'About the project' at: https://www.staffsnameindexes.org.uk/default.aspx?Index=U&About=1
A blog about the Staffordshire Asylums was produced as part of the project and is at: https://staffordshireasylumrecords.wordpress.com/
[Links accessed 9/2/2022]
For further information contact Staffordshire Record Office |