Grangegorman: from ‘asylum’ to university 

Before the construction of the TU Dublin campus, Grangegorman was known by many names: ‘The Grange’, ‘Brendan’s’, ‘The Mental’, and ‘The Puzzle Factory’. Most of the names referred to the psychiatric hospital that overshadowed the area for almost 200 years.  

Although the vast hospital grounds were considered a place to avoid by many locals over the years, I met one man who grew up in the area thinking of it warmly as his father’s workplace.

“It was like a playground for us”, says Tony Foster, whose father John Foster was a psychiatric nurse in Grangegorman for 25 years.

“We moved there when I was seven and we all played on the St Brendan’s handball team, the hockey team, even the cricket team,” Tony explains.

His father John was also well known as secretary of the nurse’s branch of the Workers Union of Ireland.

The sporting outlets could be for patients and workers alike, Tony says. “They had a sports day every year for the patients as well as the staff and their families.” 

John Foster worked at St Brendan’s up till 1969, and Tony’s brother Ollie was also a psychiatric nurse there his entire career, retiring just before the closure of the last remaining units in 2013. 

Before it was founded as a hospital in the early 1800s, the area was on the outskirts of Dublin city and home to many houses of industry and organisations dedicated to housing and employing the poor, who found themselves overwhelmed by the mentally ill.

It was decided that a dedicated institution would be built to cater to the sick. It was named Richmond Asylum, in honour of the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Duke of Richmond.

Opening in 1814, the original asylum was designed by Francis Johnston, also the architect of the GPO. It was modelled after the London Bethlehem Hospital, otherwise known as the infamous Bedlam.  

Patients were intended to be “morally managed.” They were given proper meals, exercise, social interaction, and unpaid work, often carpentry or shoemaking for men, while women did laundry or needlework. Ultimately, however, not just people with mental illnesses, but anyone who fell through the cracks of society wound up here.

The site acted as a fever hospital during a typhus outbreak in 1818 and the cholera epidemic of 1832. Highly contagious, victims could die of cholera within 12 hours of contraction. The gardens acted as a cemetery for the victims, with thousands of bodies being unearthed during the construction of the Broadstone Luas stop. 

In the mid-20th-century, chief psychiatrist Dr Ivor Browne tirelessly worked to improve conditions inside Grangegorman, slowly reducing the number of patients from 2000 to 400 by the time he retired. Considered a radical in 1960s Ireland, Browne advocated for intensive one-on-one sessions and the therapeutic use of LSD. He theorised that trauma was the root of many mental illnesses and was a prominent sceptic of modern psychiatric drugs. His goal was to close down the old institutions and moving patients back into the community.  

At its peak, Ireland had the largest number of psychiatric hospitals per capita in the world. When St Brendan’s closed in 2013, it only had 54 patients, all of whom were moved to the Phoenix Care Centre, on the North Circular Road.