By Gill Levy A photo of Betty as a baby with her brothers and sisters. In this 1901 photograph, the baby clearly has Down’s syndrome.  It is my 20 year-old grandmother holding her.  My Great Aunt Betty was the youngest child of Michael and Netta Green. Her eldest sister (my grandmother) was already 20 when Betty was born. […]

By Gillian Murray (née Anderson) I used to go to Normansfield every week at least a couple of times in the middle of the day to eat my packed lunch in the lovely grounds of the place. My mother, Mrs Anderson, worked as a book keeper in the main administrative office for many years, from […]

By Sheila Clarke (nee Stewart) It was early 1972 and I was 19 when I became a nursing assistant on South Wing. I remember the shock of the smell that first morning, it was eye watering. This was my first proper job and I was keen to impress, hoping to train as a nurse and […]

By Juliet Huntington (née Eadie) I grew up in Teddington and worked at Normansfield from 1982 until 1985 within the Occupational Therapy department in my early twenties. The closure of Normansfield was overdue. However this does not recognise that at the end it was a forward thinking establishment too, with much ground breaking work enabling […]