St. Brendan's Hospital (Irish:Ospidéal Naomh Breandán) was apsychiatric facility located in the northDublin suburb ofGrangegorman. It formed part of the mental health services of Dublin North East with its catchment area being North West Dublin.[1] It is now the site of a modern mental health facility known as the "Phoenix Care Centre". Since the official opening of the Richmond Lunatic Asylum in 1815 the Grangegorman site has continuously provided institutional facilities for the reception of the mentally ill until the present day.[2] As such the Phoenix Care Centre represents the continuation of the oldest public psychiatric facility inIreland.[3]
An Act to amend an Act passed in the Eleventh Year of the Reign of His late Majesty King George the Fourth, intituled "An Act for appropriating the Richmond Lunatic Asylum in Dublin to the Purposes of a District Lunatic Asylum."
In 1810, the governors of theDublin House of Industry, together with the physician Andrew Jackson, succeeded in gaining a grant from the government to establish a separate asylum from the House of Industry.[4] It was built on a site adjacent to the House of Industry and officially opened as the Richmond Lunatic Asylum in 1815, although it had received its first patients from the lunatic wards of the House of Industry in the previous year. It was named afterCharles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond,Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Initially, it was established as a national asylum to receive curable lunatics from throughout the island of Ireland. The facility joined the state system as a "district asylum", as defined in theLunacy (Ireland) Act 1821, in 1830,[5] following the passing of theRichmond Lunatic Asylum Act 1830 (11 Geo. 4 & 1 Will. 4. c. 22). Thereafter it was renamed the Richmond District Lunatic Asylum and its catchment area was defined as the city and county of Dublin, the counties ofWicklow,Louth,Meath, and the town ofDrogheda.[6]
In the latter years of theFirst World War, a facility known as the Richmond War Hospital was established in the grounds of the hospital.[7] TheWar Office closed the war hospital in winter 1919.[8] The main facility became the Grangegorman Mental Hospital in 1925[9] and St. Brendan's Hospital in 1958.[10]
After the introduction ofdeinstitutionalisation in the late 1980s the hospital went into a period of decline.[11][12] In the 2008Report of the Inspector of Mental Health Services it was recommended that acute admissions to the secure units 3A and 3B should cease due to their unsuitability and all admissions should be redirected to the new purpose-built unit atConnolly Hospital.[13] In June 2010, the Mental Health Commission instructed the hospital to stop the admission of acute patients on account of the "entirely unacceptable and inhumane conditions".[14] After many of the patients had been transferred to Connolly Hospital, the older facilities at St Brendan's Hospital were retired in November 2010.[15]
As part of theGrangegorman Development Plan, where a large portion of the site of the old hospital will be used to develop the newTechnological University Dublin campus, new modern psychiatric facilities were developed.[16] A new state-of-the-art "Phoenix Care Centre", comprising 54 bedrooms and ensuites, recreational rooms, clinical rooms, administration areas, seclusion rooms and therapy gardens, opened in March 2013.[17]
Since at least the 1920s various association football teams, including hospitalworks teams, played in the hospital grounds. These have includedGrangegorman F.C. who wereFAI Junior Cup finalists in 1928–29 andLeinster Senior Cup finalists in 1946–47.St. Brendan's F.C. were members of theLeague of Ireland B Division during the 1970s and 1980s. More recentlyBrendanville F.C., founded in 1963, were members of theLeinster Senior League. All three teams also played in theFAI Cup.[23][24][25]
^Reynolds, Joseph,Grangegorman: Psychiatric Care in Dublin since 1815 (Dublin, 1992), p. 23.
^Reynolds, Joseph,Grangegorman: Psychiatric Care in Dublin since 1815 (Dublin, 1992), p. 1.
^O'Shea, Brian, and Falvey, Jane, 'A history of the Richmond Asylum (St. Brendan's Hospital), Dublin' in Hugh Freeman and German E. Berrios (eds),150 Years of British Psychiatry. Volume II: the Aftermath (London, 1996), p. 408.
^Durnin, D. (2019). "The Impact of the First World War on Irish Hospitals, 1918–1925. In: The Irish Medical Profession and the First World War. Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History". Palgrave Macmillan.doi:10.1007/978-3-030-17959-5_6.S2CID166920516.{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help)
^"Notes and news". The Journal of Mental Science. 1923. p. 397. Retrieved9 May 2019.
^Moylan, Thos. King (1 December 1944). "The District of Grangegorman".Dublin Historical Record.7 (1):1–15.JSTOR30083896.
^O'Shea, Brian & Falvey, Jane, 'A history of the Richmond Asylum (St. Brendan's Hospital), Dublin' in Hugh Freeman and German Berrios (eds),150 Years of British Psychiatry. Volume II: the Aftermath (London, 1996), p. 411.
![The environs of the Richmond District Asylum in 1862[26]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fwikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aRichmond_District_Asylum_and_North_Dublin_Union.png)
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