About Us
Glenside Hospital Museum is an Accredited Museum, award-winning charity and community asset, managed and run by volunteers.
Protect our Wellbeing (PoW!) campaign
PoW! (Protect our Wellbeing) is Glenside Hospital Museum’s new initiative, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It aims to strengthen community wellbeing through creative programmes, mental health awareness, and heritage engagement. PoW! helps secure the museum’s future while celebrating its unique past. Learn more and get involved by visiting our PoW! campaign page.
Meet the team - Trustees and PoW! delivery team
Anwyl Cooper-Willis : Trustee & Chair
Anwyl has a background in biological sciences, holding a BSc and PhD in Zoology from London University. More recently, she has gained experience in design and art. Her involvement with Glenside Hospital Museum began as an artist-in-residence, and she started volunteering shortly after, and has continued for the last ten years. Anwyl takes on various roles at the museum, including welcoming visitors, managing accounts, and researching information for displays, all of which she finds exciting and interesting. With her design background, she also assists with interpretive work and banner layouts. Anwyl is also a trustee of the Susan Williams-Ellis Foundation in North Wales.
Anna Bryant : Trustee
Anna is a freelance consultant specialising in museums and heritage, with over 25 years of experience in the sector. She has a proven track record of managing, developing, and delivering projects that involve partnerships, audiences, and storytelling. She has been a trustee since 2021, drawn to its compelling stories of the three hospitals it showcases, which captured her imagination from her very first visit. Anna is deeply passionate about the museum's mission to destigmatise mental illness. As a proud Bristolian, she wants to engage more local and national audiences in exploring these important yet often overlooked histories, which remain relevant today.
Claire Charlton : Trustee
Claire has been a trustee at Glenside Hospital Museum since November 2021. In her professional capacity, she is the Head of Innovation at Wincanton Logistics. With over 26 years of experience in the logistics sector, Claire has worked across operations, solution design, sales, innovation, and transport. Her interest in mental health was sparked in 2019 when she became a trained Mental Health First Aider. Inspired to utilise her business expertise to benefit the community, she joined the Trustee team at Glenside. Combining her professional skills with her passion for mental health causes, Claire plays an active role in supporting the museum’s development, strategic planning, and enhancing its digital activities and online presence.
Kate Brooks : Business Development Manager
Dr. Kate Brooks has a personal connection to Glenside Hospital Museum, as her great-grandfather was a tailor at the hospital. While she may not have inherited his sewing skills, she has followed in his footsteps in a different way, as the museum's Development Manager, and is interested in preserving the museum's collection, which includes several tailored items. With over 30 years of experience in Higher Education as a lecturer, researcher, and writer, she now works with a charity that supports vulnerable young people in securing history and heritage placements. Kate particularly enjoys working with our volunteers in telling Glenside’s many stories.
Carly Wong : Digital Engagement Officer, PoW!
Carly has a lifelong connection to Glenside Hospital through her late father, Jeff, who spent 34 years working as a psychiatric nurse there. Since 2022, Carly has been the familiar voice behind Glenside Museum's social media pages. A former professional photographer, she’s never far from a cat and is known for capturing pet portraits with her signature playful style. Carly also has a reputation for creating exhibitions in unusual spaces. As a proud member of the new PoW! team, she jumped at the chance to transform the museum's balcony room into a quirky visitor experience for 2025: Tea in the Turret.
Claire Royall : Project Administrator, PoW!
Claire grew up in Lockleaze, close to the Stoke Park Dower House, former home to the Stoke Park Colony of hospitals, a familiar landmark from her childhood. With over 15 years of marketing experience at Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives, she led successful campaigns for high-profile exhibitions, including Jeremy Deller and Martin Parr, and was part of the team that launched M Shed in 2011. These experiences have given her a deep understanding of the dedication, planning, and collaboration required to successfully bring major heritage projects to life. Claire is inspired by the chance to contribute to a project that promotes mental health awareness, education, and the preservation of an important part of history, all while making a meaningful impact on people's lives.
History of the Museum
The museum was founded by Dr Donal Early, a consultant psychiatrist at Glenside Hospital. Objects and documents were collected and saved, from all corners of the building and beyond, and first displayed on the balcony in the dining room of the hospital in 1984.
When the hospital closed in 1994, use of the derelict chapel was given to the museum on a peppercorn lease which continues today from the University of the West of England. Volunteers set to work scrubbing floors, removing boards from windows, and placing exhibits on pews. In 1997, when Stoke Park Hospitals for learning disabilities closed, members of staff and volunteers brought items to add to the collection.
In 2009, following lead being stolen from the roof, the museum was closed. With the help of a team of volunteers, Luke Pomeroy, a young volunteer, redesigned and rebuilt the layout of the museum. It reopened in 2010, and in 2016 became an ACE Accredited Museum (2347). It continues, with the help of many volunteers, to develop glimpses of the history of hospital care using its unique collection.
Our partners and projects
The team at Glenside Hospital Museum have a successful track record in delivering unique and inspiring partnerships and projects!
In 2024 the museum received funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to deliver its PoW! (Protect Our Wellbeing) initiative. PoW! is an innovative initiative designed to empower individuals to explore and enhance their mental health and overall wellbeing by engaging with Glenside Hospital Museum’s unique heritage. By involving communities and partner organisations in various activities and events that will enhance the museum's resilience and sustainability and ensure its unique heritage is preserved and appreciated for generations to come.
A Royal Society grant (2022-24) linked neuroscience discoveries to the displays to engage young people in the importance of sleep, and a grant from Heritage England (2022-24) enabled the collection of oral histories of Commonwealth nurses who worked in the NHS, resulting in Answering the Call.
Widening access to the collection, and including a more diverse range of stories, has continued to characterise museum activity. This includes the work of learning disability curators, funded by a Quartet grant (2017-19), and a partnership with Outside In where 10 artists responded to the museum’s collections, supported by NLHF, John Ellerman Foundation, and the Art Fund, culminating in Looking to the Light (2020-23).
With support from Arts Council England, the museum gained Full Museum Accreditation in 2016. A further Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund grant, and Association of Independent Museums funding through the Pilgrims Trust between 2016-19, enabled a project to conserve and tour 15 unique drawings in our collection by artist Denis Reed (RA, RWA) a patient at Bristol Mental Hospital in the 1950s, alongside drawing workshops supported by Bristol City Council’s Imagination fund.
In 2013, the museum gained a grant from Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund to explore and exhibit the period 1915–1919 when the hospital was requisitioned by the War Office and became Beaufort War Hospital. It was made famous by the artist Stanley Spencer, who as a young man was an orderly there and painted pictures of the hospital for the Sandham Memorial.
A Heritage Lottery Fund grant in 2011 enabled over 60 interviews with people who lived and worked at Glenside Hospital to be collected, giving many perspectives. The museum continues to collect memories from anyone that worked or stayed at the hospitals.
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