Myth means so many things. An architectural historian writes that the story that the Moorfields Bedlam was modelled on a French Palace is a myth, but an old one. She means it is untrue. But what is the Moorfields architecture if it is not a myth in the sense of a story packed with meaning? The meaning is elaborated in a poem after the symbol is built, but are we to believe that the rulers of the City of London, who paid for this expensive edifice, woke up one morning in horrified surprise that anyone should think there was meaning to mad people being displayed in a palace built in the French style?

The architecture of unreason was to be  counterbalanced to the architecture of reason being developed in the city cathedral of St Paul's. The mathematics for the dome of St Paul's was developed by the Moorfield's architect.