Helen Maguire is backing a campaign to restore a derelict cemetery in her Epsom constituency.
Horton Cemetery contains the graves of 9,000 people who died at one of the five mental health hospitals that made up the Epsom Cluster between 1899 and 1955. Today, it’s neglected and not accessible to the public.
Interviewed by the Lost Souls project, Helen Maguire said:
“I would really welcome the opportunity to have a conversation with the landowner to see if we can find ways to return this graveyard to a public location so relatives can access it.
“It's about heritage, education and people being able to learn about what Epsom used to be. This isn't just in Epsom, it's in other places as well, other locations where graveyards have even built over. This is the start of a conversation that raises the awareness of mental health.
“I think a memorial is a great idea. These individuals have been forgotten, and in many situations it’s not like Horton, where we might have the possibility of making it public one day.”
The video above, which is produced by The Friends of Horton Cemetery, tells you more.
I wrote about the Epsom Cluster in one of my columns for the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy. It was so vast that it had its own railway system:
In 1896 the London County Council purchased the Horton Estate in Surrey with the intention of building a cluster of mental hospitals and other institutions there. A railway system, linked with the main line, was built to carry materials for the construction of the hospitals and then carry the coal and other goods they required for day-to-day operation. The cluster, naturally, had its own power station.
In the 1920s the volume of coal and coke delivered to the power station, and to glasshouses at one of the hospitals, reached a peak of 15,000 tonnes per year.
This railway system was little used during the second world war, when some of the hospitals were given over to wounded and recuperating soldiers, and it was scrapped not long after hostilities ceased. But before it closed, enthusiasts in sports jackets and flannels came to photograph the operations for railway magazines. It is said you can still find traces of the lines among the housing estates, private roads and golf courses that now occupy the Horton Estate.
And, as the horrific story about the home at Tuam in County Galway reminds us, it’s not only asylum inmates who lie in unmarked graves.
I write often here of Dennis O’Neill, who in death was the most famous child in the country during the opening months of 1945. His death from abuse and neglect while in foster care shocked the nation, even as the Allied forces closed on Berlin.
Yet when Dennis's brother Terry, who had been with him when he died, later went with his girlfriend to look for Dennis’s grave, this is what they found:
Pat and I had to walk up and down the row several times before we found the correct grave, because there was no headstone or marking on it, only a metal plate with a number. Long grass grew up around it and some kind of prickly bramble had twisted its way across, sinking in deep roots. I saw a cemetery attendant and ran over to confirm that this was, indeed, Dennis’s grave.
I just stared at the spot, as if somehow I would be able to see through the soil to where he lay. Pat got down on her knees and started tearing up the bramble.
“We should come back with some shears to trim the grass, and bring some flowers next time,” Pat said.
It Newport Borough Council felt any guilt over sending Dennis away to his death, it was not deep enough to lead them to buy him a headstone.
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