Grave marker, grave '221'

Grave '221'. One of four numbered iron crosses used to mark the graves of patients buried in the hospital grounds

Simple iron crosses like this one were used to mark the graves of patients buried in the hospital grounds of St Audry’s Hospital in Melton, Suffolk, England. Opened in 1765, the hospital was originally a workhouse for the poor until it became the Suffolk County Lunatic Asylum in 1827. From 1917, the hospital was also known as St Audry's Hospital for Mental Diseases. Patients who may have spent the major part of their life and died in the institution were marked in the Hospital cemetery, not with their name but with a number.

The hospital shut down in the early 1990s, as did the Asylum Museum attached to it. The hospital grounds were redeveloped as a golf course, during which the grave markers were removed.