a controversial therapeutic community approach to an entire institution of over 2,700 people. In 1968, Martin described the development of Claybury's therapeutic community in Adventure in Psychiatry. In 1972 a collection of essays by staff members and edited by Elizabeth Shoenberg were published under the title, A Hospital Looks at Itself: The three pronged attack of therapeutic community techniques, use of new drugs and minimal use of the physical treatments, led to a reduction of the patient population from 2,332 in 1950 to 1,537 in 1970. However, lack of community care resulted in the 'revolving door syndrome' with over half admissions being re-admissions. From the late 1940s it became increasingly difficult to recruit student nurses and other support staff from the UK. Many, with little English, were recruited from Europe and given English language tuition. In 1962, Enoch Powell, then Minister of Health, proposed that hospitals should seek recruits from the West Indies and Pakistan. By 1968 there were 47 nationalities represented at Claybury with different ethnic, religious and linguistic backgrounds, all part of the therapeutic community diversity. Developments in community care Enoch Powell had predicted in 1961 that all psychiatric hospitals would be closed within 15 years. In reality, the first, Banstead, closed in 1986. In 1983 the North East Thames Regional Health Authority (NETRHA) committed itself to a 10-year plan for the re-provision of care currently provided by Friern and Claybury hospitals. The number of patients on Claybury's statuary books at the year end in 1980 was 1,057 and in 1990 was 429. For some long-stay patients, thoroughly institutionalised, Claybury had been both home and local village for decades, in some cases for over 40 years. The challenge to manage their rehabilitation in a new environment, that they had never experienced and might well treat them with suspicion, was immense. In 1988 the Health and Social Services Research Unit at South Bank Polytechnic published a research paper detailing the post-discharge experience of a group of former long-stay Claybury patients. Closure To mark its centenary in 1993, the Forest Healthcare Trust published a comprehensive and well documented history of the hospital entitled, Claybury, A Century of Caring, written by Eric Pryor who had been a member of the nursing staff since 1948. With the Care in the Community Programme and the planned decline in patient numbers, the Claybury site faced a difficult future. The NHS pressed for extensive demolition