St Edward's Hospital 2.77

St Edward's Hospital also known as Cheddleton County Mental Asylum, was opened in 1899 by Staffordshire County Council to hold up to 600 mental health patients. The hospital closed in 2002, and is now converted into a series of apartments and houses.BackgroundCheddleton was the third and final county asylum in Staffordshire, built to accommodate patients from the north and supplement the existing asylums at Burntwood and Stafford. After carrying out at least 13 site inspections. including Bramshall, Knenhall near Moddershall, and Wetley Rocks were purchased for £12,750 in February 1892 on the edge of the village of Cheddleton. The site was located on a spur of land overlooking the River Churnet and the Caldon Canal at Cheddleton Heath just north of Cheddleton.A competition was held for the design of the asylum for which 30 entries were received. The brief requested a design to accommodate 300 male and 300 female patients, and following standard practice they would lead segregated lives from one another on opposite sides of the asylum. The winning design was by London-based architects Giles, Gough and Trollope, with construction beginning in 1895.ConstructionFollowing a tender exercise, W Brown & Son of Salford were selected with a contract price of £164,250. To assist in construction of the hospital - which required the shipment of over 18 million bricks - the contractors laid a 0.75miles line from the North Staffordshire Railway's (NSR) Churnet Valley Line at to the hospital site. Brown's used a small 0-4-0 Tank engine called Weaver (Manning Wardle H-class 1072) to transport both men and materials to the construction site.