Brislington House

]] The asylum was established by Edward Long Fox and considered state of the art when it opened in 1806, having been built on moral treatment ideas pioneered at the York Retreat, which had opened in 1796. Fox had an extensive private practice in Bristol and served as a physician at Bristol Infirmary before taking over a madhouse at Cleeve Hill in 1792. He had a range of different businesses locally and was able to pay £4,000 for the Brislington Estate. The site had previously been Brislington Common, which had been enclosed in 1780. The site, on the main road between Bristol and Bath, now the A4, enabled him to attract wealthy clients from both cities. It had erroneously been suggested that…

The front of the building is in the Palladian style, with a central block and two wings, all of which have slate roofs. The three-storey central block has a Doric porch and a nine-window range. The wings on either side have six-window ranges. On the southern end is an attached pavilion and on the northern end is the chapel, which contains a window from St Luke's Church, Brislington. The current layout was developed in the mid-19th century from the original separate blocks, which had been linked by a corridor at basement level.