• How did Linehan Vale come about?
  
  Well, my girlfriend at the time and I had become interested in asylum urban exploration during Christmas 2016. We checked-in on the asylum urbex scene in the forums to find that the scene was playing out it's end-credits: After almost thirty years of continuous closures and subsequent abandonment, the last of these relics were in the later stages of demolition or conversion. All of the remaining Victorian and Edwardian asylums were in the advanced stages of their end games, aside from some notable exceptions, such as Essex's Goodmayes and Cardiff's Whitchurch. It was clear that we most likely wouldn't be able to experience such an explore for ourselves, despite a couple of trips to the strangely characterless Harperbury Mental Hospital in Hertfordshire, which provided some inspiration at least.
  
  And so, as we had a blank dolls-house at our disposal, the idea came to us to why not build our own abandoned institution?! As well as being an arts and crafts project in general, it could also serve as a sort of physical accompaniment to all the amazing photos taken by urbexers of these asylums, a model to present the hobby of urban exploration and commemorate the passing of the classic UK asylum. The project could also serve as wish fulfilment as well - if we couldn't visit such places in person then let's create that instead and explore it in the living room! And so it developed from there, we both worked on it for a few months, my ex and I went our separate ways and i continued with the project. 

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• What's your personal view about the asylums?I
  I am of the opinion that the asylum movement based upon the success of the more humane Royal Bethlehem hospital and the creation of the "moral architecture", lead to the development of the asylum concept, which came along at the right time.

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  Regency Britain was evolving into the society which is more familiar to the way of life we have today, and this continued into the Victorian era. Industrialisation advanced, cities grew, the pace of life quickened, knowledge increased and society evolved. It was clear after the tun of the 1800s that illnesses of the mind were an affliction to be treated with more compassion and proactivity than had been before. And people experiencing those illnesses were to be afforded dedicated care and supervision separate to those in other public institutions such as the workhouse and prison systems. At the that the first County Asylums act was passed - this was a revolution. One of the first unconscious steps towards a national health and welfare system.Imagine that time travel to the Victorian era was a thing and you could book such holidays. if a no-frills budget time-travel holiday company accidentally mucked-up your booking and instead of your being zapped back to a week in July as Lord or Lady of a manor, you were inadvertently booked to be some pauper in an institution in rainy February, you're best option would be to spend it in asylum, as privacy-less and regimented as that would be. You sure as hell wouldn't want to be spending it in the prison system or the workhouse networks. An asylum would be (most likely a new build), clean, with grounds and gardens to spend time in, airy rooms to write your complaint letters in,  and somewhat of a compassionate attitude by staff. You would be residing in a marvel of the age, even if the experience was dull and quite bizarre. At least you wouldn't be loosing your fingers in machines of the workhouse or the darkness of a prison.  
  
  You could perhaps group asylums into three distinct eras - the first sixty years, which take us up to the 1900s. This was when the concept of the asylum was to provide tranquil. leafy surroundings, various occupational therapies and dependable routines in order to care for and potentially cure patients of their maladies. The period between the 1900s and 1950s are when the asylums hit their peak of usage and medical influence. By the early 20th century, there was a vast network of large-scale county asylums, all with highly evolved and designed layouts and high standards. Into this stratified world came brand-new treatments, many courtesy of electricity, and later  - psychotropic drugs, all of which would usher in a brave and extreme form of therapies that would gain these institutions an infamy, disgust and distrust that would galvanise a counter-movement in later decades. And speaking of later decades - the period of the 1950s to 1990s saw the asylum network and the concept itself not just collapse but also be wilfully demolished at the same time. Advances in medicine and changes in society altered the position of asylums from being seen as benevolent (if antiquated) institutions to instead repressive, sinister systems ill-equipped to treat people and at worst doing greater harm. A chain of events unfolded to erode the confidence of psychiatry and by extension the sphere of the asylum. Society and the government began effectively dragging their feet in keeping this places over. Cuts were made. Hospital complexes were cauterised and shrunk down. Overcrowding and underfunding increased. This toxic, burning mix vaporised the last fragments of superiority and validity of the asylums. They had to close.
  
  Mention the comparison of the Titanic's locked-gates with the perceptions of the asylum. Much like how time has rendered the complexity of the Titanic disaster into a story of heroes and villians, asylums are now seen as a gothic horror story, without any context to how these places actually operated or why they were created in the first place.

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• What was the inspiration to create a doll- house asylum?

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• Looks like a lot of time is spent on this, I must be single, right?

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• What is the story behind the Linehan Vale name?

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• Favourite asylum or hospital based shows or films?

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