The museum was founded by Dr Donal F. Early; a consultant psychiatrist at Glenside Hospital from the 1950s.

One of the most celebrated workers at the former Bristol Lunatic Asylum was the painter Stanley Spencer (later Sir Stanley Spencer RA CBE) who worked there in 1915–1916 as medical orderly in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

As is recounted in Paul Gough's book, Stanley Spencer: Journey to Burghclere Spencer had a difficult time in the hospital, leavened by moments of quiet reverie, as the painter wrote of his second day "I had to scrub out the Asylum Church.

The lunatics are good workers & one persists in saluting us & always with the wrong hand.

Another one thinks he is an electric battery... "[4] On 14 December 2009, on the 50th anniversary of Spencer's death the University of the West of England – who now own the hospital building – held a celebratory event to unveil a series of artwork and a blue plaque remembering the painter's time in the vast teeming metropolis of the Beaufort.