Latest news with #Crowthorne
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Daily Mail
I was a nurse at Broadmoor Hospital... Ronnie Kray and the Yorkshire ripper were NOT my scariest patients - here's who still gives me nightmares
You wouldn't guess from his soft Cornish voice and jolly demeanour that Paul Deacon worked at the most notorious mental institution in England. For a decade, Paul was a nurse at Broadmoor Hospital, the high-security psychiatric hospital situated in Crowthorne, Berkshire. Now in his sixties and retired, Paul witnessed everything over the course of his career - from being on shift when Peter Sutcliffe was stabbed in the eye, to popstars Martin and Gary Kemp paying Ronnie Kray a visit. After leaving school with no qualifications, where he says he was 'a bit of a rebel', Paul began working at a shop in his hometown. Witnessing a man collapse and later die on his shift deeply shocked the teenager - and, on the advice of a counsellor, he decided to become a nurse. At the tender age of 18, Paul was thrown in at the deep end on the busiest ward in St Lawrence's psychiatric hospital in Bodmin, Cornwall. His job was to assess patients on the admissions ward who had just come in - unmedicated - with various mental health problems like schizophrenia, severe depression, bipolar and eating disorders. The opportunity to work at Broadmoor was one Paul jumped at, 'Why not?' he thought. He recalls how during his interview he was forbidden from looking around the hospital, and that nurses there referred to dormitories as 'cells' instead of rooms, and called patients 'inmates'. Inside Broadmoor, Paul quickly worked his way up the system. He was there when the most notorious inmates were: Charles Bronson, Ronnie Kray and Peter Sutcliffe, the 'Yorkshire Ripper'. These serial killers and mob bosses were however 'no bother' - they only created more work for the nurses because other inmates kept trying to attack them. Paul was on shift the day that Peter Sutcliffe was stabbed in the eye by a fellow patient. 'We had 200 female patients banging on their doors cheering the day he was stabbed in the eye,' Paul remembers. He said Ronnie Kray was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the 'father figure' of the hospital. Kray 'could be very violent' and continued to run his business ventures from prison - even trying to recruit staff, Paul said. Paul recalls one instance when he was on duty in the visiting hall, with about 30 other nurses. He noticed everyone pointed at the door and started whispering in excited tones. Paul turned to the door to look, and in walked Martin and Gary Kemp. 'They were researching for their new film, The Krays. 'You can get confectionary from the mess, so they ordered a couple of shandies and a chocolate bar, had the interview with Ronnie, who left them with the bill. 'It was £150! Martin looked at it and said "that's a bit expensive for two shandies and a chocolate bar!" Paul laughs. 'Ronnie had added on a charge for the interview.' Its infamous convicts arguably made Broadmoor a household name in the 1980s and 90s as the oldest and one of the highest security mental hospitals in England. But there was one encounter, with a patient who didn't make the headlines, that still wakes Paul up in the middle of the night. 'I was in a music lesson supervising a patient. I'd worked with him before and usually we got on fine. 'But he kept looking at me in a really funny way. It was chilling. I asked him what was wrong. 'He said "Paul, the voices are really bad today, they're telling me to kill you". 'It made me go cold. It made me realise you could never get complacent on that job, ever. I still wake up in the early mornings haunted by it.' 'It reminded me never to get too comfortable with a patient or let my guard down.' Another time, Paul found himself locked inside a cell alone with a patient. Although he had practiced for this scenario during mandatory 'hostage training', Paul confesses that he was in 'complete shock' when his colleagues accidentally locked him inside a cell with an unbound patient having a psychotic episode. 'Everybody was trained but it just went totally wrong on this day,' Paul recalls. 'You never mentioned the names of other staff members - we all had numbers to avoid any confusion if people had the same name. 'There were three of us restraining one patient. I said number two get out - and they both left. 'The door shut and the patient jumped up; it was now a hostage situation and I was in complete shock.' But despite these flash episodes of absolute terror, Paul remains sympathetic for the inmates he worked with over years at Broadmoor. 'Most of them have really bad role models as young people - all abusive or awful parents. On a day to day basis they were drip fed trauma.' Hence why he found it shocking that some prisoners tried to fake mental illnesses to get into Broadmoor and avoid a normal prison sentence - a big mistake, Paul says. 'You learnt how to spot the fakers from the look in their eyes and how they responded to medication. 'One man quickly realised his mistake - he role played hearing voices and got caught out. 'But once he realised he couldn't simply leave he was petrified and started crying.' Paul explains: 'In prison, you have a release date, in hospital there is no such certainty. 'They have a tribunal of people at Broadmoor debating whether to let you out. It's a collective decision.' The best part of Paul's job was seeing patients cured. He reflects on one young actor who had been on the soaps. After going psychotic on set and stabbing someone in town, he had been entered into Broadmoor Hospital, where Paul helped treat him for ten years. 'He's married with kids now. That's one of the best bits of the job - seeing people cured. I believe there's always hope.' But witnessing some patients come out of their psychosis was also the worst part of the job for Paul. 'When you're nursing someone who's extremely psychotic, it can be very traumatic when they become well again and have the shock of realising they've killed someone. 'Being told you've slaughtered your entire family makes someone so terrified, it makes me wonder whether sometimes the kindest thing to do would have been to keep treating the psychosis on a low level with medication.' Paul misses the comradery of the nursing team at Broadmoor, the excitement of working with new patients and building relationships with them. But now the former nurse keeps busy in retirement by speaking about his time there and reliving the highs - and the lows. Paul also sits on the board for the Royal College of Psychiatrists and is currently writing a second book.
BBC News
02-07-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Banking hub to open in Crowthorne Baptist Church building
Part of a village church is set to become a banking hub after receiving council Baptist Church in the High Street had an office space which was available for businesses to Access UK, a not-for-profit organisation, funded by banks including Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC, NatWest and TSB, has taken the space on and will use it as a banking Forest Council approved the firms plans, on 24 June, to change the space from a community and learning centre into a place for commercial, business and services. The venue will provide cash and basic banking services from a number of banking brands, You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
BBC News
30-05-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Plans for banking hub to open in Crowthorne church building
Plans to open a banking hub in a church building have been Cash Access UK has applied to temporarily convert an "underused office" to the east of Crowthorne Baptist Church on High Street in Crowthorne, Berkshire, into the hub for up to three hubs provide cash and basic banking services from a number of banking brands, with staff available to help customers in Forest Council has validated the application and a decision is yet to be made. The banking hubs have become essential for areas where bank branches have closed than 150 have now been opened across the a cover letter, agents Ridge and Partners LLP called the Baptist church "an important place of worship and a community facility"."For this application, Cash Access is seeking to convert a small portion of the building, currently an underused office, into a temporary cash hub located to the east of the building, away from the church itself and the community hall."This is to ensure that there is a local bank operating within the high street for all community residents, whilst Cash Access look for a more permanent building." You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
