[2] The hospital was designed by Henry Littler of Manchester, architect to the Lancashire Asylums Board[3] and built of red brick made from clay dug on site.

[3] The hospital was officially opened as the Fourth Lancashire County Lunatic Asylum on 1 April 1873, although 115 patients had already been admitted in the previous year, some of whom helped with the building work.

[6] Before long it also had its own railway, telephone exchange, post office, reservoirs, gas works, brewery, orchestra, brass band, ballroom and butchers' shop.

[11] In 1929, the Hospital Commissioners noted that an "open door" principle was practised on a number of wards, and the 1930 Act later resulted in the admission of the first voluntary patients.

[12] At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Wards 31 to 36 in the West Annexe were again commandeered by the military and mental patients were relocated to other hospitals in the area.

The commandeered wards were renamed the Whittingham Emergency Hospital and treated casualties of war, both military and civilian, the first being evacuees from Dunkirk.

Parker and Mr Charles Breakall produced an early electroencephalograph (EEG) machine using War Surplus material purchased for £2.10.0d.

An article was published in The Lancet describing these experiments, and considerable interest was said to have been expressed by the American Department for Space Medicine at the time.

[8] From 1965 to 1968 English rock musician Kevin Coyne worked at the hospital as a social therapist and psychiatric nurse and it was whilst at Whittingham that his son Robert was born.

Several further complaints were suppressed until the following year when the hospital management committee finally intervened and announced an inquiry into allegations of corruption and abuse.

[17] Ray Gosling and Nick Broomfield spent three weeks in the hospital filming a documentary for Granada Television, broadcast on ITV on 26 August 1975.

Due to uncertainty over the construction of the Broughton bypass[24][25] and the economic downturn there was little further progress, and the remaining buildings were left derelict, a popular destination for urban exploration.