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Shaftesbury Drive, HITCHIN, SG5 4FS

As the former Fairfield Hospital (also known as the Arlesey Three Counties Asylum) is redeveloped the church has been cleaned externally but is otherwise just used as a builders store.

The church was designed by the same architect, George Fowler Jones, who designed the main asylum buildings. It was completed in 1879 and is constructed of yellow brick with ashlar and red brick dressings. The bell tower visible here has four stages with light slits on the middle stages and a clock on each of the two visible faces. The clocks are not original having been replaced in 1982. Regretfully the clocks had stopped on the day that the photograph was taken. The church has, since 1997, been a Grade II Listed Building.

Church at a former mental hospital built in the late 1870s to a design by architect George Fowler Jones. Grade II listed - https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1244866?section=official-list-entry/

The Victorian mental hospital, opened as Three Counties Asylum, closed in 1999. The main buildings were converted to houses and flats, and new housing built in the grounds. The church is a grade II listed building.

The Victorian mental hospital, opened as Three Counties Asylum, closed in 1999. The main buildings were converted to houses and flats, and new housing built in the grounds. The church is a grade II listed building, 1870s. The clock is wrong, showing the same time as in a view of five years earlier.

I don't know what will happen to this old church. It is stuck in the middle of a huge building site.

The Victorian mental hospital, opened as Three Counties Asylum, closed in 1999. The main buildings were converted to houses and flats, and new housing built in the grounds. The church is a grade II listed building, 1870s. This door seems little used.

The Victorian mental hospital, opened as Three Counties Asylum, closed in 1999. The main buildings were converted to houses and flats, and new housing built in the grounds. The church is a grade II listed building, 1870s.

A small part of the main building of the former mental hospital, closed in 1999 and now converted for more normal residential and commercial use. The architecture is hugely impressive, that is, both huge and impressive! Grade II listed buildings, opened in 1860, architect George Fowler Jones.

The asylum was built to serve mental patients from the three counties of Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Huntingdonshire. It was built in several stages commencing in 1856 to the designs of the architect George Fowler Jones. The semi-circular building was, I think, one of two recreation halls added in 1870 to the original central block. By 1881 two main symmetrical wings had been added to this central block, and in so doing I think that the longest corridor of any building in Europe at that time was created. The whole building was Grade II Listed in 1985. In 1927 the name of the asylum was changed to the Three Counties Hospital and in 1960 to the Fairfield Hospital. With the move towards care in the community the hospital became surplus to requirements and was closed in 1999. The building has since been refurbished to create high class apartments, with new housing estates being built in the former hospital grounds, the whole estate becoming known as Fairfield Park. The site is currently in the civil parish of Stotfold but has always been associated with the adjacent parish of Arlesey which had a railway station on the main east coast railway named after the asylum.