ABSTRACT
A gate marks a boundary between two worlds: familiar and strange, outside and inside, seen and unseen, mad and sane. Like a port, it is a liminal place, a threshold, a place of entries ~nd exits, a dividing-line that marks some kind of change: of place, time, power, status or rights. In western culture over the past two hundred years one of the most feared gates, along with that of the workhouse, has been that of the asylum, the loony bin, the nuthouse. Naughty children were taunted with the threat of being taken by the men in the white coats or, as was commonly said in Colchester, 'going on the number 5 bus'. A refuge for displaced persons, it was a place most definitely to be avoided. And yet, ironically, it was also a haven for some, a place of prosperity and security for many, a source of much-valued employment when jobs were scarce, a place where working-class men in particular found regular, pensionable work that also provided excellent sports facilities and tied accommodation. It was a place where whole networks and generations of kin worked in a web that spanned almost the entire twentieth century. Until it was taken down in 1962, the gate at Severalls,l like other gates at other mental hospitals, meant different things to different people, but always marked the boundary between two distinct communities and signalled the cutting-off point between a whole range of different rules, regulations, behaviours, divisions and separations.
