Scattered across the UK, often in rural and isolated settings, stand dilapidated mental asylums built in the Victorian days to house the treatment of mental illness. Many of these huge scale buildings housed as many as 2000 resident patients who were usually segregated based on their class, gender and type of illness. Patients followed very rigid routines. Control and repression were vital to the hospital’s functioning. Locked wards, padded rooms and straitjackets were used to control patients and techniques such as ECT and lobotomy were common practices. The pharmacological revolution in the 50’s meant that chemical means of restraint grew to dominate. This, as well as the Community Care Act, led to the closing down of these institutions in the 90’s. Some of these buildings have been redeveloped but many still stand derelict. My project explores the loaded atmospheres and personal histories within these spaces by combining my photographs with archive imagery of former patients and snippets of personal narratives.