Mentally abandoned

Previously I’ve mentioned the similarities between Ararat and Beechworth, they both had jails built to the same designs, well they also had mental hospitals built to the same general designs – Aradale in Ararat and Mayday Hills in Beechworth.

Aradale Mental Hospital (Lunatic Asylum) comprises a large main building and associated structures erected largely between 1864-67. The main buildings are constructed in brick, the structures are cement rendered brick Italianate with slate roofs. An engaged colonnade faces the top storey of the central block, which is linked by double storey bridges to long side wings with towers.

John James Clark is credited with designing the complex.
The main approach is from the south via a serpentine drive starting at the Italianate style Gate Lodge, which dates from 1866. The part single, part double storey dwelling was constructed of stuccoed brickwork with slate roofs. Features of the design include the gabled entrance porch, round headed and other window hoods, combination of roof forms, plinth and eaves detailing.



The Ararat Asylum was one of three (the others were Kew and Beechworth) built to replace the controversial Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum in Melbourne. The asylum was built as a town within a town with its own market gardens, piggery and other stock kept on the grounds. It is surrounded by large grounds planted out as formal garden, farm and parkland.


The earliest buildings include the vast main building with its towers, a kitchen and dining room block, a billiard room, a library, school, a large multipurpose hall and 2,100ft of verandahs where patients could enjoy fresh air sheltered from winds and extensive remnants of the encircling ha-ha wall.
Later nineteenth and early twentieth century additions include the farm buildings, convalescent cottages, sun-shades and fever tent. At its height in the 1950s, it had about 900 patients and over 500 staff. The site has also many later buildings and structures, including smaller houses built for attendants after World War Two.

Today the complex is made up of 63 buildings ranging in age from the original wings built in 1860 to the modern forensic unit which was built in 1991. It was closed as an asylum in December 1993 (The Forensics Unit continued till September 1997).
In 2001 with a State Government grant of $7.4m, it granted places to 50 students and became the Aradale campus of Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE (NMIT) part of the Australian College of Wine, though they are only using a portion of the site and the rest is deteriorating.

It isn’t surprising that people say the building is reputedly haunted, it has all the ingredients – large sprawling 19th century buildings with extensive corridors, 1,000 odd deaths, the institutionalised insane.
For a short history of Aradale and its hauntings see http://www.aghs.com.au/aradaleasylum.html
A post on the Beechworth Asylum next.