In the mid-1850s, the counties of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire set about looking for a site for a new asylum to house their 'pauper lunatics'. Two hundred acres of farmland at Stotfold on the Hertfordshire-Bedfordshire border were purchased and in March 1860 the first patients were admitted to the new Three Counties Asylum (TCA). The asylum was in operation for almost a century and a half and, as approaches to treating mental illness changed, so did TCA.