As of late summer 2025, we are just starting our community project here in Sussex. We have a pool of volunteers, and these people are researching, writing, reviewing and publishing our first stories. But we need more volunteers as there are about 3,200 people buried in St. Francis Hospital cemetery who were buried there up to the end of 1925 and we are limited to accessing archived records and publishing stories of people who died 100 years or more in the past. (The total number of people buried there is just under 4,000.) We have learned from the Friends of Horton Cemetery charity – Reg. No. 1190518 – see Horton Cemetery, Epsom, Research Project below, whose research project model we are emulating, that as more stories are published more readers contact the project to give additional information on published stories, or tell that project about their relatives buried in Horton Cemetery and ask for them to be researched and have their stories published, or offer their help and support to that project. We hope to get the same effect on our project here in Sussex and to achieve this effect we need more stories to be published which requires more volunteer researchers.

Please go to our Volunteers page to learn more about joining our team of volunteers for this Sussex community project. In that section you will learn that we have set this project up so that our volunteers can enjoy their work, learn more about the social history of Sussex, become part of a community of like-minded people who work when it suits them, who are respected and valued, who are part of a wonderful team of people with big hearts, who are never pressured by our system, who do not have to work to deadlines or schedules, who are supporting our mental health community – the patients, people suffering from mental health problems, their family members, the professional community working so hard to support them under the difficult circumstances of understaffing, underfunding and under resourcing. Our volunteers are publishing true stories of real people who lived, suffered and died in the mental health system of the past, who on death were mostly buried unnamed, unmarked and perhaps soon forgotten or even purposely written out of their family history – anonymised. Our volunteers are bringing these people “back to life” by researching, writing, reviewing and publishing their stories to help show that mental health problems can happen to anyone, and rather than attracting shame and stigma can just as easily attract sympathy, understanding, care and respect.  

Horton Cemetery, Epsom, Research Project

Five London County Asylums functioned in Epsom, Surrey between 1899 and the late 20^th century. They used a common burial ground, Horton Estate Cemetery, to bury unclaimed mental health patients who died in these hospital between 1899 and 1955, when the cemetery was eventually closed to more burials. There are almost 9,000 mental health patients buried in Horton Estate Cemetery. The NHS sold the 4.5 acre cemetery to a local developer in 1983, as rumour has it, for a comparative pittance. Up until its sale the cemetery, even after it had been closed to further burials, was kept clean, tidy and well maintained by hospital staff. The new owner has not continued this duty of care and today Horton Estate Cemetery is almost completely covered in trees, shrubs and undergrowth. The ground has been dug up by badgers and foxes building setts and dens, bringing human bones to the surface. Builders have dumped rubble on the ground, people have jettisoned broken toilet articles and tiles on the ground, white goods have been dumped there. There is one headstone left standing (awkwardly), the burial map(s) that must have been used by gravediggers has(have) been lost, resulting with inability to find the positions of who was buried where. The current landowner has shown no respect or concern for the people buried there or consideration for the thousands of families who have relatives buried there.