The Manor House at Horton was quickly converted into a asylum in 1896 by erecting a sprawling network
of single storey temporary buildings around the site. Called Manor Hospital, designed by the LCC’s asylum
engineer, William C Clifford Smith, the buildings catered for 600 female and 100 male patients.
It was literally a web of timber clad corrugate iron huts.
Old maps show the old manor house with two ad-hoc wings branching off at right angles.
It was supposed to last 15 years - it closed 100 years later.
Today, the Manor House survives, and one of the ward blocks flanks a garden centre (it is literally a big tin
shed with timber bay windows). The rest has been swept away, and is all modern housing.
Left: Demolition at Horton. Many of the roofs have been ripped off, and the demolition teams are working
methodically from north to south.
