Truby King Recreation Reserve Dunedin: Seacliff Asylum History and the Enchanted Forest

The Enchanted Forest holds the collection of specimen trees planted by Truby King, and a 1991 inventory recorded 745 significant trees; the plan names sycamore and hawthorn as invasive weeds of concern.

The site is also within mapped wāhi tupuna areas in the council’s district plan, and the management plan commits the council to acknowledging mana whenua as well as the reserve’s social and botanical history.

The ground proved unstable: a slip in 1887 left the north wing unusable, and a Royal Commission in 1888 criticised Lawson and the contractor.

Frederic Truby King, later known as the founder of the Plunket Society, was medical superintendent from 1889 to 1923. The management plan credits him with designing buildings, training attendants, promoting fresh air, exercise, a good diet and useful work as treatments, and developing separate facilities for patients with different kinds of illness, as well as the plantings that became the forest.

The site also holds painful memories. On 8 December 1942, fire broke out in Ward 5, a two-storey wooden building where women patients were locked in at night. Only two of the 39 women in the ward escaped, and 37 died.

The commission of inquiry that followed found the building was a fire risk and criticised leaving patients locked up without adequate supervision. The writer Janet Frame was a patient at Seacliff in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and her novel Faces in the Water (1961) draws on the treatments she received.

Demolition of unsound parts of the main building began in 1945, the central block came down in 1959, the hospital stopped admitting patients in 1964 and closed in 1970.

After a period as the home of the Dunedin Museum of Transport and Technology, the last building inside the reserve, Clifton House, was demolished in 1992. Heritage New Zealand lists the asylum site as a Category 1 historic place (List 9050).

The old asphalt road that once carried vehicles to the hospital gives good universal access up to the plateau around the cricket ground, the management plan says, though it also warns that some pathways are slippery.

Grass paths reach the quieter edges of the reserve, and woodland paths, some cobbled and some dirt, lead through the Enchanted Forest. Dogs are allowed.

There are two main entrances, on Russell Road and at the southern tip of the reserve, and two smaller pedestrian entries along Coast Road. The council’s facility page notes limited roadside parking; the track page adds a small informal parking area at the southern end, while the western parking area is closed to vehicles.

The management plan sets aside land beside the original Russell Road entrance for a future visitor car park. The track page points to Heritage New Zealand’s listing for the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum Site and to the management plan for the full history.