title: Behind the crumbling walls; the re-working of a former asylum's geography.
abstract: This paper attempts to examine the effects of deinstitutionalization on a former asylum's human and physical geography, through a case study of St Lawrence's Hospital, Bodmin, UK. It researches the inevitably impermanent geography of an asylum in the process of being 'run down'. The paper includes an empirical account of the rationalization of a former asylum, reconstructing an east to west migration of activities across the site. It deals with St Lawrence's as a 'stigmatized' place unable to escape the mark of its asylum past, and as a place that staff and local people cannot imagine being used for anything other than land uses associated with 'mad people' or other marginal groups in society. The paper deals with how St Lawrence's is regarded by some as a 'community', people who recall with a measure of affection how the asylum used to be a 'home' as well as a 'workplace', a nostalgia which rebounds into suspicion about the dismantling process. Fundamentally, the paper aims to tease out and work through the hopes and fears that now surround the former asylum's environment.
authors.forename: C V
authors.initials: CV
authors.lastname: Cornish
mesh_terms: D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D003688:Deinstitutionalization; D004739:England; D006272:Health Facility Environment; D006778:Hospitals, Psychiatric; D006801:Humans; D011287:Prejudice; D011908:Rationalization