[2] During the late nineteenth century Barnwood House flourished under superintendent Frederick Needham, making a healthy profit and receiving praise from the Commissioners in Lunacy.

[4] Barnwood House Trust continues to exist as a charity that supports research and awards grants to people with physical or mental disabilities in Gloucestershire.

The rates of board charges are most moderate, the dietary is generous, the salaries of the officers are liberal, and the entertainments are sumptuous, and yet a profit of upwards of £4,000 a year is realized.

"[9]Even the sanitary arrangements were singled out for praise: "The same thoughtfulness and judicious provision which have brought the general management of Barnwood House Asylum to such a high pitch of excellence have evidently been brought to bear on its sanitary arrangements….The water-closets are all self-acting by means of rods, not wires, and have Tyler's enamelled iron S-trapped pans and 6 inch [150 mm] soil pipes"[10]But a darker side to the "model lunatic hospital" was revealed by newspaper reports of inquests into suicides, including that of the unexplained death of Barnwood's junior assistant medical officer, Richard Bush Drury Batt, in 1886.

Whilst at Barnwood, where he lived with his wife Charlotte (née Shooter), Needham took part in the regular entertainments and concerts, once playing the part of King Giltgingerbread in The Enchanted Princess; wrote a number of papers, including Brain Exhaustion and Insanity in relation to Society; and was president of the Psychological Association of Great Britain and Ireland in 1887.

[12] Rules for attendants at Barnwood House, published in 1880, stress the importance of obeying the orders of superintendent and matron, confidentiality, kindness and consideration towards patients.

The first published report on the use of electroconvulsive therapy on patients in England was a collaboration between Gerald Fleming, the medical superintendent of Barnwood House and editor of the Journal of Mental Science, and Frederic Golla and William Grey Walter from the Burden Neurological Institute.

German psychiatrist Lothar Kalinowsky had witnessed ECT in Italy and demonstrated it at the Burden Neurological Institute; five patients at Barnwood House were selected as guinea pigs for the new form of convulsive therapy.

This small preliminary series was not intended to provide data on the therapeutic value of the treatment – in only one of the patients could a remission be hoped for with any confidence – but was designed to throw light on the relative advantages and dangers of the method.

"[15]The advantages were immediately apparent: "For the operator, only a small amount of training and experience is necessary, and a knowledge of physics, though desirable on general grounds, is not essential….the apparatus is comparatively cheap and portable, and preparation of the patient need take no more than a minute.

"[20]But the "most modern methods of treatment" were losing their allure by the 1960s and, in spite of a new advertisement appearing in 1963 with no mention of ladies and gentleman, or leucotomy and electric shock, and the railway stations replaced by the A417,[21] Barnwood House experienced financial difficulties and closed in 1968.

[1] The hospital closed in 1968 and not finding a buyer to take it on, the two wings of the main building were demolished and the housing of Grovelands and Cherston court built there.