ABSTRACT
The Victorian lunatic asylums were what the locals called ‘Funny Farm’ and a farm they usually were bes ides be ing a gent leman’ s e s t a te wi th i t s complement of tennis courts, bowling greens, shrubber ies, lakes and ‘fine prospects’. This is why some of those splendid buildings set in mature parkland outside the towns are now a developer’s dream with the estate agents hard on their heels; they aim to make an exclusive residential area out of the despised asylum where once the demented, the ‘silly’, the deformed and the simply unlucky fed the hens and grew their vegetables (Fig. 2.1).
