The seed of an idea

 

Saturday 1 June, 2024, I walked around the meadows that surround the Bethlem Royal Hospital with a colleague who works there now. We caught a bus from Crystal Palace which wound through the back streets of Beckenham and Bromley before finally dropping us off at the northeast corner of the site, a bit of a stretch from the main gate. After about five minutes’ walking, we found what seemed to be an entrance, where a gap between a small set of maisonettes revealed a gate and pathway through trees that beckoned to us. But the gate was locked fast, the grounds were impenetrable, and the fence was unscalable. We resumed our route along the road to find the entrance to the grounds, then my friend led the way around the bottom meadow, past beautiful trees, a large house now boarded up and padlocked, and up to a desolate site that once housed an IAPT operation. We stuck to the fence line, which provided a secure boundary all the way around, and passed no one. As we approached the southwest corner of the site, we entered some dense growth and looked for a pond that was marked on my map. We didn’t find it, repelled as we were by undergrowth. 

Apparently, a farm once operated from this part of the land. It was not unusual for psychiatric hospitals to have farms before WWII. Not only did the farm produce food for the hospital, but it was also a place where some of the patients could find something to do and make themselves useful––an important idea in the “moral treatment” tradition of psychiatry. Later, John and I would visit the archives and learn about the farms at Warlingham and Bethlem and discover that there were some farm buildings at Bethlem that were of historical interest. Unfortunately, they burnt down just before the preservation order came into force. It’s hard to imagine the farm now, but it helps make sense of the patches of thicket that are sometimes penetrable but where broad pathways suddenly terminate in brambles, apparently leading nowhere. 

Reflecting back on our walk, I remember that we found our way into the wooded areas that thread through and around the site, we picked our way through rhododendrons, jumped across streams and stumbled across the faint shadows of what seemed to be a sunken garden. Sometimes the undergrowth was open enough to walk through, sometimes the undergrowth proved impassable. The "woods" seemed unloved, but the meadows were full of knee-high grass and flowers and the expanse of sky above us made me gasp. 

We saw very few people, and only one who we guessed was a patient because of the way she was walking with her companion. Their bodies were sort of held in a subtle way that spoke not of friendship so much as of a power relation between the two, and silence. Somewhere along the way we shared lunch at a wooden picnic table and realised we were looking at an orchard. I had suggested the walk because the seed of an idea had taken root in my mind: "horses would love to live here."

I was in the final stretch of an expensive course to qualify as an equine facilitated psychotherapist (EFP). I had written thirty-three essays, made two of videos and three PowerPoint presentations, done three residential experiences, and worked with six practice clients. But although I had a certificate I had zero horses, no land, and only a vague idea where this new journey could lead me. Perhaps I could make something work here. Back in 1999 I had worked as an assistant nurse at the Bethlem on Gresham ward. This was at the beginning of my psychoanalytic training, and I had taken the job to gain experience of working with people at their wits’ end. My colleague is pursuing her own path with psychoanalysis and psychiatry. We spoke to each other about our teenage experiences with horses, about working on psychiatric wards, and about the changes that have happened over the last quarter of a century. Not long after our walk, I received a message: my colleague had spoken to someone in the site office who had responded positively to this rather mad idea. His brother had had a great experience with horses in his youth, and he was happy to see if he could take things forward once a list of requirements had been met. Wow! Now for the search for some horses.