Lennox Castle Hospital was closed in 2002, leaving the institution’s sad and difficult history to be forgotten, just like its crumbling, abandoned former home. In 1925, plans were drawn up by Glasgow Council for a new ‘Mental Deficiency Institution’, and the Lennox Castle Hospital complex was opened a few years later, in 1936. When it opened, Lennox was hailed as being way ahead of its time, and was the largest and best equipped hospital The hospital cost over £1 million to build, and had space for 1,200 patients. There were separate dormitories for male and female patients, each one holding around 60 people in two wards.
Patients also had access to two communal dining halls (with seating for 600 people in each) and a central Assembly Hall, which housed a stage, equipment for cinema shows, and recreational facilities. Despite a promising start, conditions at Lennox Castle Hospital soon began to deteriorate. The hospital was vastly overcrowded, understaffed and underfunded. Vulnerable patients were left to fend for themselves Friends and family of patients generally reported that staff tried their best, despite the lack of resources, but conditions in the hospital were described as “wretched and dehumanizing”. Conditions were so bad by the 1980s that Doctor Alasdair Sim (the hospital’s Medical Director at the time), said he had never worked in a “worse pit”,
A 1989 study by the British Medical Journal found that a quarter of patients at Lennox Castle Hospital were dangerously underweight and malnourished. Some claim that there was more than neglect going on at Lennox Castle Hospital.