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Fieldhead Hospital

hospital in West Yorkshire, England

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ20047295
Source-derived summary

Fieldhead Hospital is a psychiatric and learning disability hospital in Wakefield, United Kingdom. It is managed by South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

History

The hospital, which replaced earlier hospitals such as Oulton Hall, Hatfield Hall and Cardigan Hospital, was built at a cost of £2 million and opened by Princess Alexandra on 11 July 1972. The hospital was designed as a series of villas, each named after a local area and each intended to accommodate a category of resident i.e. children, adolescents, adults, geriatrics, or severely disabled.

A medium secure unit, known as Newton Lodge, was built in the north east of the hospital site for mentally disordered offenders in the early 1980s.

The hospital started offering a broader range of psychiatric services, after the Stanley Royd Hospital closed in 1995. A patient with paranoid schizophrenia was charged with murdering a fellow-patient at the hospital in December 1998.

The "Unity Centre", a new building with state of the art therapeutic areas, en-suite bathrooms and vastly improved patient relaxation areas, which was built at a cost of £17 million, was opened in September 2017.

Mental Health Museum

The Mental Health Museum (previously known as the Stephen Beaumont Museum of Mental Health) is located at the hospital.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Fieldhead Hospital” as hospital in West Yorkshire, England. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1972, 1995, 1998, 2017—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1972. The account is most persuasive where Fieldhead, Hospital and hospital can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as hospital in West Yorkshire, England. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20047295. Authority coordinates are 53.697, -1.492. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1972, 1995, 1998 and 2017.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Fieldhead Hospital”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Fieldhead Hospital primary sources, Fieldhead Hospital archive and Fieldhead research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Fieldhead Hospital”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Fieldhead Hospital” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.