ABSTRACT
The York Retreat that was constructed as a purpose-built lunatic asylum by the Quakers between 1794 and 1796 enjoys an international reputation (Figure 5.1). The foundation has been regarded as a ground-breaking psychiatric institution because its therapeutic regime represented a new, humane attitude towards the mentally ill.1 It has also been noted as perhaps the earliest planned ‘therapeutic environment’ – it was surrounded by pleasure gardens that were designed for the patients to enjoy.2 It is argued here that it was signifi cant in a third way – in contributing to a change in Quaker attitudes towards conventional architectural design practice from hostility to enthusiastic reception; for – like its therapy and its gardening – the process of construction, its plan and, to a certain extent even its façade, are expressions of a distinctively Quaker way of proceeding. This is of particular interest with regard to understandings of vernacular architecture because it emerges at the intersection
5.1 The York Retreat, designed by William Tuke, John Bevans, Peter Atkinson the Elder and the Religious Society of Friends, 1794, in a view of 1812 by Peter Atkinson the Younger.
