1753 – St. Patrick’s Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin

The essayist and Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Jonathan Swift, died in 1745 and left an endowment in his will for the establishment of a mental hospital for Dublin as “St. Patrick’s Hospital for Imbeciles”. In March 1747, Dr. Steevens’ Hospital agreed to provide a small amount of land fronting Bow Lane for the purposes of building the hospital, however it was nearly three years before construction started, as the governors became involved in lengthy discussions over plans and architects.

By 1753, the building, designed by George Semple, was completed, but the governors did not have the money to furnish it, to employ staff, or to maintain charity patients. And so the building lay empty for another four years. Semple had based his design for St Patrick’s Hospital on the infamous Bethlehem Asylum Hospital in London, commonly known as ‘Bedlam’, with a main administrative block set off in a u-shape by two wings laid out as cells. On Monday 26 September 1757, the hospital finally admitted its first patients, consisting of six men and four women.

“St. Patrick’s or Swift’s Hospital, for the reception of lunatics and idiots, was founded by the celebrated Dean Swift, who bequeathed his property, amounting to £10,000, for this purpose. The building, situated near Steevens’s Hospital, was opened in 1757, and has also apartments, rated at different prices, for those whose friends can contribute either wholly or partially to their maintenance. A large garden is attached to it, in which some of the patients are employed with considerable advantage to their intellectual improvement.”
A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, 1837

Now much extended with more modern facilities added to the campus.