The Bedford Lunatic Asylum was a mental health facility.

Samuel Whitbread headed the committee which commissioned the asylum.

The Bedford Lunatic Asylum, designed by John Wing, was opened in April 1812.

In 1845, the UK parliament passed a new act requiring that counties either build their own asylums or operate an asylum jointly with another county.

The bodies of patients that died at the hospital are now buried underneath the children's playground.