Monument record IPS 731 - St Clement's Hospital and Asylum, Ipswich.

The Ipswich Borough Asylum opened in 1870 due to a shortage of places at other asylums outside Ipswich. The building was designed by W.R. Ribbans and was panned to have 120 beds. The male wards were in the west wing and the female wards were in the east. The building does not have any of the towers, turrets of cupolas that many county asylums had at the time, with the intension to give a friendlier and open appearance to the building. In the late 1890’s, an extra floor was added to most of the existing wards. This brought the capacity up to 200 beds. The building adopted the ‘mental hospital’ suffix as early as 1908 and a small detached chapel was added to the east of the site circa 1920. In the 1940’s the asylum’s population peaked around 420. The site was incorporated into the NHS and became known as St Clement’s Hospital. The last in-patients left St Clement’s in 2002 but the building has continued to be used as an NHS administrative building (S1).

St Clement's closed as a working hospital in 2011 following the construction of a new unit. Thus buildings were sold off in 2012 (S2).