EXCLUSIVE: 'Quarter of a million' lost souls hidden in mental health asylum graves
We investigate the fate of historic mental health patients' graves and find thousands are being forgotten, neglected and even sold off
Last updated 8th Jul 2025
More than a quarter of a million bodies lie nameless in unmarked and largely forgotten graves around the UK, bodies belonging to people who died in Britain's Mental Asylums.
Some of those sites sit in plain sight in our communities, have been neglected, or even sold off. One now houses a children's playground.
In our exclusive investigation, Senior Correspondent Mick Coyle looks into what happened to those who died while in the Victorian mental system, why it still matters today and uncovers uncomfortable truths sitting at the heart of our towns and cities.
"It's the biggest secret in the world, it's the greatest insult."
Here's the story in Mick's own words:
I've just shown Francesca Gyau the site where her great grandmother is buried.
It sits behind a fence, next to a busy B-road, on land marked as private property. There is no headstone; there never was.
What's more, there's no legal means to access her great-grandmother's grave.
Hilda Nicholls is one of more than a quarter of a million people who died in Britain's mental asylums, and were buried in what was then called "pauper lunatic" graves.
Used during the Victorian "lunatic asylum" era up to the middle of the 1900s, these plots were given a numbered marker to correspond with death records.
- The graves carried no names.
- Often people were buried 3-4 deep.
- A century later, many of these graves lie forgotten, abandoned and neglected... or in Hilda's case - sold off to a private landowner.
Listen to our exclusive Lost Souls documentary
Uncovering Britain's 'Lost Souls'
I'm Mick Coyle, a journalist who's been covering mental health stories since setting up the Mental Health Monday podcast in 2017.
I've always been struck by how the historic perceptions of mental health still impact our current outlook, despite best efforts to open up the conversation.
But what greater example is there of the shame and stigma associated with mental illness than to condemn the poorest people who suffered to an eternity of anonymity?
From early 2025, I started to piece together a story lost from our social history: of discrimination, neglect and a blind-spot at the centre of our communities.
Where is the dignity in death for these lost souls? And how can we ever shake off the misconceptions of the past, if we don't take steps to write this wrong?
Up to 400,000 people in Britain's forgotten mental health asylum graves
My investigation's spoken with researchers, historians, community volunteers and family members of those interred in these sites to get a sense of the scale of the issue.
And it appears to be a huge one.
Some estimates suggest up to 400,000 thousand people could have been buried on sites associated with around 140 asylums. More conservative estimates say it could still be a quarter of a million.
Some were laid to rest within, or close to, the asylum grounds, while others ended up in local churchyards.
"They were forgotten in life, now they're being forgotten in death."
Kevin McDonnell's on a mission to raise awareness of Britain's Lost Souls, "It's a huge wrong, no one knows about it, it's wrong on every level and it needs to be brought out into the public.
"Once these people were in the ground, they were not given a name, they were given a marker with a number on it. That's an absolute disgrace.
"Most of those gravemarkers have now been lost, which is why you can walk over the ground and not realise what's happening.
"It's a shame. A shame in every sense of shame. We're trying to let the world know these people existed."
What happened to Britain's mental asylums?
The 1845 Lunacy Act saw asylums built right across Britain, and operated for another 100 years, although some were open for many centuries, in different guises.
The NHS took ownership of these asylums in the mid 1900s, and the development of medication and a shift towards in-the-community treatments saw the asylums close down, and patients were no longer buried in pauper graves.
Land was sold, or repurposed. In some places they now house modern NHS facilities, while in others the burial sites were deconsecrated and built on.
Later, burial sites themselves slowly became forgotten. Iron markers that showed the plot numbers were often lost, stolen, melted down or became overgrown.
Why were mental health patients buried in unmarked graves?
My research suggests that, in most cases, burial services for these patients were conducted with dignity, and patient's religious beliefs carefully respected.
But when no-one was around to claim the body, such as a family member, the patient was placed in a "pauper" grave site.
And there they remain, often in plain sight, but with nothing like the upkeep you'd associate with municipal graveyards in the modern day.
Royal College of Psychiatrists Historian Dr Claire Hilton invited me to their London HQ to talk about how these burials were carried out.
Claire's visited a number of sites across the country and seen the good and the bad.
She tells me how asylums would send for ministers from different faiths to ensure an appropriate burial was delivered.
And that the grave markers used were to ensure the records of the deaths were kept.
However, very few of those markers now remain.
Claire tells me: "In many ways the hospitals were doing what they saw as best. It often wasn't best, it wasn't good enough, but some of today's practices are also not good enough."
She says that over time these asylum sites have been sold or repurposed, which has lead to some burial sites being overlooked: "Land is valuable, it gets sold, as have the hospital buildings, as have the rural estates that surrounded the buildings."
And like many I've spoken to Claire has a sense that not talking about this issue has a lasting impact on attitudes today: "(In the worst cases) you don't get any signage of what the place was before and I think better recognition of our past, and those people, will help with addressing issues around stigma today.
"I would be wanting to encourage more to be done. It is good for their memories and good for our souls."
Finding relatives in unmarked mental asylum graves
Francesca is visiting Horton Cemetery in Surrey for the first time, on the trail of her great-grandmother, Hilda Nicholls.
Hilda's inside the cemetery, lying unmarked in a plot of 9000 graves near Epsom which was used to house the bodies of a cluster of local asylums. But the boundary is as close as she's allowed to go.
It's clear Francesca is unhappy: "I'm disgusted by what I see, I can't get in there, there are 9000 people buried there, this is sacred ground and it doesn't look very sacred."
We cross a busy road to an opening in the fence. A path opens up alongside a field of horses, but a 'Private' sign stops us in our tracks. After making the trip from Hertfordshire, Francesca can't quite believe what she's seeing. "They were people, they are people, if Hilda hadn't been here, I wouldn't be here. She just deserves respect.
"Her whole life she was made to feel ashamed of, she was hidden away, and that's how she died and now she's been buried in a place like this, it's like she's being disrespected in death as she was in life.
"This isn't kind to do this to people, whether they're alive or dead, this isn't kind."
Francesca tells me she's pleased she started researching her family tree, and is keen to let others know Hilda's story, and those like her: "For generation after generation we were told 'don't talk about it, don't look' but the past needs to be brought to the surface, how are we going to learn from our mistakes if we don't talk about it?"
Communities trying to remember lost souls
The Friends of Horton Cemetery are trying to raise awareness of this specific site, and have spent many years trying to engage with authorities to purchase the land and create a memorial space to remember those buried there.
But their campaigning is at an impasse.
This plot was sold off in the 1980s, and is now overgrown woodland. A small plaque marks the site, but it's barely readable from the roadside.
A stone memorial, erected after a FOHC campaign at the start of this century lies broken nearby, having been struck by a car. The memorial had to be placed on the road-side of the boundary because the group couldn't secure its place inside without the owner's permission.
The landowner has not communicated with group, and the local council have not taken up their request to purchase the land for the community under a Compulsory Purchase Order.
It's left campaigner Lionel Blackman frustrated, both for the community today, but also because of the perceived lack of dignity it offers to those interred inside.
He told me: "It's a historic wrong to sell a plot containing 9000 graves. If it was your grandmother, mother, son or daughter and then where they're buried is going to be ignored having been sold, how would you feel?
"You don't now just neglect that cemetery, let it overgrow, not allow relatives to visit because it's trespass. That's the bottom line of this."
Lionel also sees a bridge in time, which makes the case of Horton cemetery relevant to 21st Century Britain, adding: "If we can demonstrate respect for those who are buried I think it makes a major contribution to the acceptance, respect and recognition of those living with a mental health condition."
I've written to the landowner to ask if he would like to participate in the investigation, and at the time of writing, he has not responded.
I also asked Epsom and Ewell Council for clarification of the Horton site. Cllr Neil Dallen, Chair of Strategy & Resources Committee said:
"Horton Cemetery, a derelict cemetery linked to Epsom’s former psychiatric hospitals known as the “Epsom Cluster”, was sold by The Department of Health & Social Care to a private property company in 1983 . Since then, nature has taken its course, and the site has become a woodland.
The site is protected from commercial development by the Disused Burial Grounds Act 1884, is excluded from development in the council’s emerging borough Local Plan and has additional protection against development due to its Local Listing as a place of significant local heritage, which has been in place since 2004."
What can happen to Britain's mental asylum graves?
Up in Menston, West Yorkshire, it's a different story.
I'm visiting High Royds cemetery, containing the bodies of 2861 mental health patients from the asylum that sits, now converted, a stone's throw from where I'm standing.
In the last two decades, the local community, led by a band of volunteers and researcher Mark Davis, have reclaimed this plot and turned it into a memorial garden.
Relatives and neighbours can sit and reflect on the lives of their relatives in peace and tranquillity here.
Again, there are no markers (volunteers have uncovered some lost in the grass during the refurb) but crucially the link has been drawn between the land itself and asylum grave records.
A simple sign at the chapel entrance tells visitors how the grid system of graves was laid out, clearly showing grave numbers and rows so families can find the exact spot where their relatives are buried by cross referencing it with a list of patients inside the graveyard's chapel.
A chance for remembrance, a chance for dignity to be restored.
"Hello Gran, it's me again"
Alan Storey helped rebuild the roof on the chapel, giving up his Saturdays for a year to remove a tree that had grown through it, to add new trusses and make it watertight.
Inside it is a peaceful spot featuring pictures of patients, images of the asylum interiors, and a place to sit to reflect on the lives of those buried outside.
Alan's great-great grandmother Cicely Sedgwick lies in Row 9, Plot 28.
He tells me it's been an emotional time reclaiming this spot, and returning dignity to those who lie here: "This place was derelict, overgrown, misused. We've got it back to something like. It's a good feeling."
Alan proudly shows me the work he achieved as part of the renovations to the site, but it's a specific plot near a memorial bench that grabs his focus as he tells me: "It was great to put a location to her last burial place. It was very emotional.
"Mark Davis (an asylum researcher and author) invited me to the site and told me he had news about Cicely. I met him at the cemetery and we walked out, and he suddenly stopped, and I said 'Ok Mark, where is she?' and he said 'You're standing on her, you're stood on her now' - it was amazing."
Alan and the other volunteers were recognised for their work here with a Duke Of York Community Inititative Award, and a trip to St James's Palace.
But it is securing a legacy for the site and 2861 previously lost souls that fills Alan with the most pride - something he wants to see spread elsewhere: "This is going to be here now for a good few years.
"Long may it continue. The amount of sites that across the country that must end up like what High Royds Cemetery did, it'd be good to getting them up to a decent standard, so they're not the centre for vandals."
It's something Kevin McDonnell agrees with. He doesn't expect a headstone for every lost soul, but that there should be recognition nationally that this hidden secret needs to be made public: "Every single one of these burial grounds needs a memorial to say how many people are buried there, where they came from and where the public can go to read their stories."
As I leave High Royds Memorial Garden, I ask Alan if he'll read me a poem I've been told he wrote about his great-great Grandmother.
It moves Alan to tears when delivering it.
Family members looking for relatives in grave sites
My email inbox pings with relatives of Britain's Lost Souls contacting me - thanking me for the opportunity to air the stories of these forgotten people.
Some come from as far as away as Australia, with many using Ancestry-style websites to track down family members in the UK.
They speak of a right of those buried to be remembered.
And the rights of family members to remember them.
They speak of a nation that is trying to change a conversation about mental health and mental illness, yet hides those who struggled historically away.
They ask if we'll ever truly open up the conversation while this secret past lays hidden.
Where once relatives refused to speak of those "in the big house" there's a new wave who want to know more about the plights of their relatives. Yet many find them now lying in graves that are forgotten, and express their shock and surprise that mental health patients, their family members, across Britain risk falling out of memory.
We all have a right to be remembered, right?
Listen to our exclusive Lost Souls documentary
If you want to contribute to this investigation email mick.coyle@bauermedia.co.uk.
Where can I find out more about Britain's Lost Souls and other mental asylum graves?
Find out more about the mental health asylums in your area, including information about their burial procedures on the volunteer-run County Asylums website.
Read Dr Claire Hilton's paper on the fate of asylum graves and new book on life inside mental asylums
Read this paper by Peter Nolan called Hidden in Life, Forgotten in Death from the British Journal of Mental Health Nursing.
Find out more about the work done to preserve High Royds cemetery
Read more about the Friends of Horton Cemetery