amazing. I expect you’ve noticed?’ She pointed to the maze design, a double row in the finest of chain stitches, perfectly even throughout its complex twisting pattern. ‘And the appliqué stitches are so tiny. I’ve never seen such neat needlework. Whoever made it was a brilliant seamstress,’ she said, straightening her back. ‘Was it your granny, you said?’
‘Granny did dressmaking but we never saw her doing embroidery. Mum thinks it might have been made by a friend of hers.’
‘Whoever it was, I’d love to know how they got hold of those fabrics. They were unique and very closely guarded because they were only to be used by the queen. Did she have anything to do with the royal family?’
I shook my head. Granny was always rather anti-establishment and certainly no royalist. She’d always been angry about the hardship my grandfather had endured, fighting in the First World War. ‘Lions led by donkeys’, I’d heard her say once and, when I asked what it meant, she explained that the generals leading the war were upper-class twits who had no idea what it was like for what she called the ‘cannon fodder’ in the trenches.
‘You mentioned a hospital?’
‘She was a patient at a mental hospital for a short time, probably just after the war. The only thing Mum can remember is that the quilt is somehow connected to the hospital, or perhaps someone she met there.’
‘I wonder whether the hospital had a royal connection, perhaps, or a link with the factory that wove the silk?’
‘Let’s have a look.’ I turned on my laptop and searched for ‘mental hospital, Eastchester’. Almost at once an archive site came up:
A History of Helena Hall
. ‘This must be it!’
Jo peered over my shoulder as we read:
This website is dedicated to the doctors, nurses, consultants and other staff who worked at Helena Hall Mental Hospital, as well as the many thousands of patients who were cared for there during its 84 years of serving the community.
The hospital, first named the Helena Hall Asylum, was opened to patients in 1913. At its peak it housed over 1800 patients, as well as medical and academic staff. The site demonstrates the changing approach of asylum layout through the early part of the 20th century, incorporating large ward-style buildings typical of the echelon style, yet having outlying villas typical of the colonial style.
The hospital began to release patients into the community in the 1970s and finally closed its doors in 1997. Since then the building has suffered from a number of arson attacks, especially on the main hall and the superintendent’s house. The site is to be regenerated, with the main administration building and wards being restored and converted to housing.
In the grainy black and white photographs, Helena Hall looked for all the world like a well-staffed stately home. Groups of pin-neat nurses posed proudly on the steps in front of a grand entrance with pillars on either side, and gardeners in three-piece tweed suits worked among meticulously-manicured lawns and precision-edged flower beds. But there was also a harsher reality: shots of long, empty wards furnished with plain white iron bedsteads ranged on either side in military rows, bewildered women patients in baggy dresses grinning toothlessly at the camera and men with ravaged faces and slumped shoulders blinking into the sunshine from a garden bench.
‘Jeez, look at this.’ Jo pointed to a photograph of nurses and doctors gathered by a bedside, with an alarming-looking machine sprouting wires towards an invisible patient.
‘Looks like ECT,’ I said, shivering at the thought that Granny might have endured such treatments.
A section on ‘Patient Life’ showed more recent, reassuring scenes: colour photographs of dances in the Great Hall, an arch-roofed affair decorated in blue and gold, hung with chandeliers with a large stage at one end bordered with ruby-red velvet curtains. Smiling people played cricket,
‘Granny did dressmaking but we never saw her doing embroidery. Mum thinks it might have been made by a friend of hers.’
‘Whoever it was, I’d love to know how they got hold of those fabrics. They were unique and very closely guarded because they were only to be used by the queen. Did she have anything to do with the royal family?’
I shook my head. Granny was always rather anti-establishment and certainly no royalist. She’d always been angry about the hardship my grandfather had endured, fighting in the First World War. ‘Lions led by donkeys’, I’d heard her say once and, when I asked what it meant, she explained that the generals leading the war were upper-class twits who had no idea what it was like for what she called the ‘cannon fodder’ in the trenches.
‘You mentioned a hospital?’
‘She was a patient at a mental hospital for a short time, probably just after the war. The only thing Mum can remember is that the quilt is somehow connected to the hospital, or perhaps someone she met there.’
‘I wonder whether the hospital had a royal connection, perhaps, or a link with the factory that wove the silk?’
‘Let’s have a look.’ I turned on my laptop and searched for ‘mental hospital, Eastchester’. Almost at once an archive site came up:
A History of Helena Hall
. ‘This must be it!’
Jo peered over my shoulder as we read:
This website is dedicated to the doctors, nurses, consultants and other staff who worked at Helena Hall Mental Hospital, as well as the many thousands of patients who were cared for there during its 84 years of serving the community.
The hospital, first named the Helena Hall Asylum, was opened to patients in 1913. At its peak it housed over 1800 patients, as well as medical and academic staff. The site demonstrates the changing approach of asylum layout through the early part of the 20th century, incorporating large ward-style buildings typical of the echelon style, yet having outlying villas typical of the colonial style.
The hospital began to release patients into the community in the 1970s and finally closed its doors in 1997. Since then the building has suffered from a number of arson attacks, especially on the main hall and the superintendent’s house. The site is to be regenerated, with the main administration building and wards being restored and converted to housing.
In the grainy black and white photographs, Helena Hall looked for all the world like a well-staffed stately home. Groups of pin-neat nurses posed proudly on the steps in front of a grand entrance with pillars on either side, and gardeners in three-piece tweed suits worked among meticulously-manicured lawns and precision-edged flower beds. But there was also a harsher reality: shots of long, empty wards furnished with plain white iron bedsteads ranged on either side in military rows, bewildered women patients in baggy dresses grinning toothlessly at the camera and men with ravaged faces and slumped shoulders blinking into the sunshine from a garden bench.
‘Jeez, look at this.’ Jo pointed to a photograph of nurses and doctors gathered by a bedside, with an alarming-looking machine sprouting wires towards an invisible patient.
‘Looks like ECT,’ I said, shivering at the thought that Granny might have endured such treatments.
A section on ‘Patient Life’ showed more recent, reassuring scenes: colour photographs of dances in the Great Hall, an arch-roofed affair decorated in blue and gold, hung with chandeliers with a large stage at one end bordered with ruby-red velvet curtains. Smiling people played cricket,
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