Street's residents celebrates centenary of their homes

The houses were constructed to accommodate doctors and nurses who worked at the Burntwood Asylum, later St Matthew's Psychiatric Hospital, in Staffordshire.

The homes, in Upfields, were referred to as 'cottages' but the eight semi-detached properties that make up the lane were a lot more substantial than the term implies.

And since they were sold off in the 1990s, the houses have been extended with garages converted to ground-floor bathrooms and bedrooms added.

When the current owners of the properties realised the centenary of the homes was coming up, they decided to hold a street party to celebrate.

Mother-of-three Miranda Dollery, who was the last to move into the lane with husband Craig and their family, said: "Sadly the hospital is no more but our houses are, and the community wanted to get together to commemorate their construction.

"Out deeds only go back to when the houses were sold by Premier Health, which ran the hospital, but we would like to delve a bit more into the history of them.

"We know that they were built by inmates at the hospital who even made the bricks that went into building them.

"Quite a bit of land went was included in the site, so the hospital was fairly self-sufficient."

In fact the hospital, which housed more than 1,300 patients at its peak, had its own gas works, electricity plant, bakery, church, laundry, fire department, mortuary and a farm and gardens which provided the majority of vegetables for use in the hospital. It even had its own orchestra.

Mrs Dollery said the first to buy a house when they came on the market were consultant psychiatrist Graham Johnson, who worked at the hospital, and his wife Helen, who still live in the lane.

St Matthews, which was involved with the care of the shell-shocked patients during the First World War, was a psychiatric hospital for more than 130 years. It closed in 1995 and was sold for housing.