Learning Disability
3) The Local Authority Services
Somerset
Somerset County Council was expected under the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 to provide residential accommodation for people with 'mental deficiency'. It was given a large house and grounds near Taunton, Sandhill Park; and another house in Yatton, Yatton Hall, which were used mainly for children but also expanded into adults later. Otherwise men and women were housed in the old Workhouses, in Frome and at Farleigh. The Bedminster union workhouse at Farleigh, soon to be called Cambridge House, was a classical workhouse, licensed to house 'Mental Defectives' and accommodating up to 250 men, making it the largest institution for Mental Defectives in Somerset, though Sandhill Park remained the headquarters.
Bristol
Bristol was also expected to also develop a colony for 'mental defectives' after the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. First they tried to purchase Brentry, but failed. Then they licensed wards at the workhouse of Stapleton Institution (now Blackberry Hill Hospital). In the end they managed to acquire a green field site by Almondsbury and opened Hortham Colony in 1933, claiming it to be the first green field site colony in England. Built on the villa system - it looked like many other colonies and psychiatric hospitals that would be built around the country in the next 20 years.
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire did not develop any large colony of its own, buying beds in Brentry and Stoke Park.
