Bethlem Museum of the Mind

Bethlem Museum of the Mind was set up in 2015 in what was recently the administrative building of Bethlem Royal Hospital, in Beckenham. The hospital itself has had various locations over the centuries, and today continues adjacent to the Museum of the Mind, run by the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with the Maudsley Hospital.

The hospital was founded as a priory in 1247 by Simon FitzMary on the site of Liverpool Street Station, in Bishopsgate. It began caring for individuals ‘with their minds seized’ and from 1400 its focus was solely individuals with mental distress. It is Europe's oldest extant psychiatric hospital. The names Bethlem or Bedlam are medieval variants on the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem. The original building in Bishopsgate was dilapidated by 1676 and the hospital moved to Moorfields, where a vast building, designed by Robert Hooke, was constructed on the site of the City ditch. It was an unsuitable and unstable site, and by 1800 the hospital needed a new location. In 1815 a new hospital was built in St George's Fields, Southwark. The central part of this building is now the Imperial War Museum. In 1925, the Governors of Bethlem were looking for a more rural location, and in 1924 bought the Monks Orchard Estate in Beckenham, which had 278 acres of land. In 1930 the new Bethlem Hospital buildings, designed in simple Georgian style with Art Deco and Bauhaus elements, were opened by Queen Mary.

The Bethlem Museum of the Mind faces the main entrance to the hospital. Its collections include 18th-and 19th-century-restraints, an art collection including paintings by patients over the centuries and the well-known 17th-century-statues of Raving and Melancholy Madness once on the gateposts of the Moorfield hospital. The museum opened in 2015 with HLF, Wolfson and Maudsley Charity funding, and explores the history of mental healthcare and treatments. Its mission is to help reduce the stigma around mental illness and support recovery.

The building is in good condition and relatively recently restored, but the clock was not part of the conversion works and remains stained and dull. The mechanism was replaced in recent history so it keeps time, but is in need of an overhaul, while the clock faces and hands are unreadable from ground level and the copper turret is heavily stained. The restoration will include removal of the hour and minute hands, checking for fatigue, priming and redecorating in gold leaf. The main clock housing will be cleaned and restored where necessary. The clock turret will be thoroughly cleaned and the orb finial will be regilded.