Former Ipswich and Melton Mental Health hospitals exhibition

Oscar Joachim, who is originally from Sri Lanka, worked for nearly 30 years as a mental health nurse at St Clement's in Foxhall Road and St Audry's Hospital in Melton.

The exhibition which will open at The Hive on Norwich Road on Friday is entitled "A Personal Reflection on the County Asylums" and will feature photographs taken by Mr Joachim himself.

Photographs featured in the exhibition will highlight the social history of mental health services both locally and nationally as well as personal images of people and activities who were once part of the fabric of both hospitals.

An advert for Oscar Joachim's exhibition featuring a photograph of crosses in the cellar at St Audry's. (Image: Oscar Joachim) Mr Joachim said: "I wanted to commemorate these people who had lived a life in obscurity. They are very dignified photos; I showed their best side."

One of the patients that Mr Joachim looked after at St Clement's was Czech poet Ivan Blatný, a member of the Group 42 artistic group who left Czechoslovakia in 1948 after the communists came to power.

Mr Blatný who has a road named after him on the site of the former St Clement's Hospital suffered from a paranoid fear that agents from the Czechoslovakia communist secret police the StB would kidnap him.

According to Mr Joachim the presence of the famous poet who lived in a retirement home in Clacton from 1984 until shortly before his death in Colchester in 1990 became an open secret.

Mr Joachim explained that he took the photographs for posterity as mental hospitals across Suffolk including St Aubry's and St Clement's were gradually turned into "luxury homes for the rich".

He added that the eventual closure of both hospitals was motivated by what he felt was greed rather than the needs of patients.

He said: "They had large grounds and the real estate people thought they would make more money. Hospitals across the country were closed during that time. Mrs Thatcher and Mr Blair's time.

"At the same time, they were having projects such as The Millennium Dome for a billion pounds. The injustice of it all."

 Mr Joachim recalls that many former patients struggled to cope following the closure of the institutions. He recalls one man going to a post office for the first time ever to collect his benefits and giving them to the man behind him.

He said: "They sought of disappeared into the system. After being in institutions for 20 or 30 years they weren't able to cope."

St Clement's opened as Ipswich Borough Lunatic Asylum in 1870 before being renamed Ipswich Mental Hospital in 1908 and then St Clement's Hospital in 1948 following the introduction of The National Health Service.

Following a period of decline the hospital closed in 2002 with the buildings being converted into NHS until 2017 when the site was repurposed for housing.

St Audry's opened as an asylum in 1829 becoming St Audry's Hospital for Mental Diseases in 1917. It closed in 1993, and the site has subsequently been used for housing. 

"A Personal Reflection on the County Asylums" will run from Friday 18 October until Saturday November 2.