Borough Isolation Hospital

In 1893 The Isolation Hospitals Act was passed enabling the Croydon Corporation to build an isolation hospital to care for patients with infectious diseases like diphtheria and scarlet fever. To this purpose, a 22 acre plot of land was purchased in Purley Way Waddon, some two miles from the more populated parts of the borough. A year later temporary huts were constructed whilst building commenced on the permanent hospital. On 6 June 1896 the Croydon Borough Hospital for Infectious Diseases, designed by T Walker, was opened. At a building cost of £25000 it comprised of 17 buildings including separate pavilions with wards for scarlet fever, diphtheria, enteric fever and more. Each ward was partitioned into 6 separate compartments with each entered separately from the outside verandah. It had 100 beds. In 1911 two isolation pavilions and a nurses home were added and in 1930 the installation of an operating theatre.

In 1948 the hospital became part of the NHS and placed under the control of Croydon and Warlingham Park Hospital Management Committee. It was renamed Waddon Hospital. In 1954 the hospital had 220 beds but only 179 were in use. Mayday hospital had transferred 37 TB and 24 Senile Dementia patients while the wards there were undergoing some renovation. Nevertheless, the beds remained at ‘fever spacing’; 12 feet apart (3.7m)

The location of the hospital, via a private road from Purley Way, made access challenging. There was no public transport in close proximity so making it difficult for visitors. A van transported staff to and from the centre of Croydon.

By 1959 the hospital had 189 beds but was rarely full. Some five years earlier the Coombe Wood Convalescent Home had become a TB hospital taking on the care of the majority of TB patients. Throughout the 1960’s the hospital continued to offer care for infectious diseases and geriatric patients. In 1974 it was placed under the control of the Croydon Health Authority. It had 106 beds for infectious disease, geriatric and now included ophthalmic patients. Two years later it no longer took infectious disease patients.

The hospital closed in March 1984 and the site is now part of Valley Park. Some of the land was used for new housing becoming Franklin Way and surrounding streets.

Norwood Cottage Hospital

The Norwood Cottage Hospital was officially opened 21 October 1882 in Hermitage Road Upper Norwood by Sir John Whittaker Ellis, the Lord Mayor of London. The first patient was admitted a few days later on 1 November. It was the result of a community appeal, headed by a committee, and begun two years earlier to provide the sick poor of Norwood with a local hospital. It began as a small cottage built of red brick. The frontage was 130ft (40m) and ran parallel to Hermitage Road. It had 8 beds and treated a wide variety of cases. It was run on a charitable basis. Between 1887 and 1921 the hospital underwent several transformations to meet increased standards of healthcare and numbers of staff, thereby raising its bed capacity to 36. In 1909 a branch of the Ladies Linen League was established and provided, among many other things, bed linen, dressings and nightwear. It closed in 1947.

In April 1922 a War Memorial was placed at the corner of Church Road and Westow Street to serve as a tribute to the men of Upper Norwood who did not return home from the Great War. Of the £2400 raised for this tribute some £1500 was given to the hospital. The base of the memorial bears the inscription  ‘As a lasting memorial an endowment for the Norwood Cottage Hospital was provided and this monument erected’. In 1956 the War Memorial was moved to a new site in Westow Street. More land was leased in 1925 allowing the hospital to extend further along the frontage to 295ft (90m) In 1931 an Out-Patients Department with laboratory was added in anticipation of an increase in out-patient care.

In  readiness for the Coronation of King George V1 and Queen Elizabeth on 12 May 1937 the hospital was decorated inside and out. For the whole of that week the buildings were floodlit at night for free. Two pianos were gifted to the hospital; one each to the female and male wards and a tea party was held on the day for patients and friends.

At the outbreak of WW2 the hospital joined the Emergency Medical Scheme and 7 of its beds were set aside for military casualties. The hospital sustained severe bomb damage in June 1944; caught in the blast of a V1 flying bomb which fell on the corner of Hermitage Road and Central Hill. The patients were transferred temporarily to Horton Hospital in Epsom returning in August. In the interim the hospital became a First Aid Post.  The hospital received a special donation that year from Mr J R Peers in memory of his son who died of wounds in North Africa. The funds were used to buy four special beds for abdominal cases.

By 1947 the war damage repairs complete the hospital was newly equipped and painted internally and externally. A new nurses home had been added the year before and plans to build a new larger Out-Patients Department were in place. In 1948 the hospital joined the NHS under the control of the Croydon and Warlingham Park Group Hospital Management Committee. In 1953 the hospital was renamed Norwood and District Cottage Hospital. By 1966 it had 41 beds all managed by the local GPs. In 1974 the hospital was placed under the control of the Croydon Health Authority.

The Norwood and District Cottage Hospital closed in 1984. The buildings were converted and became known as Canterbury House, used as a residential care home and York House to provide care for adult patients with severe mental disabilities.

Purley War Memorial Hospital

Formerly Purley and District Cottage Hospital

The Purley and District Cottage Hospital was opened 31 March 1909. A converted house which faced into Brighton Road, it had 8 beds. Located four miles south of Mayday Hospital, it served Purley and Coulsdon. It was voluntary funded. In August 1919 the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) of the local Red Cross was granted permission to erect an army surplus hut in the grounds of the hospital. It was to act as an out-patient clinic providing massage and electrical treatment for discharged service men. The hut was 100ft long (30.3m) and 22ft wide (6.7m) By way of a reciprocal arrangement the hospital was allocated the use of two fifths of the hut which became offices, a ward with 6 beds and a bathroom. This section was joined to the hospital by a covered walkway.

As a memorial to the local men who had not returned from the Great War  the hospital facilities were further extended. In 1922 the hospital was renamed the Purley and District War Memorial Hospital. It now had 22 beds. Between then and the outbreak of WW2 the hospital was extended several times. An Out-Patients Department was opened in the refurbished hut in the grounds formerly used by the local branch of the Red Cross Society. By 1931 it had 50 beds; a childrens ward, maternity ward and X-Ray Department had all been added.

The outbreak of WW2 curtailed much of the plans for future improvements with the exception of a new kitchen, boiler house, heating system and the Out-Patients Department. The latter was to serve as a First Aid Post. During the war the hospital became part of the Emergency Medical Scheme; of its 51 beds, 39 were ordinary, 6 for maternity and 6 private rooms.

After the war plans to extend the hospital bed capacity to 100 were never realised. The L shape of the site and the piecemeal additions over the years made it impractical. In 1948 the hospital was transferred to the NHS under the control of the Croydon Group Hospital Management Committee. It now had 59 beds. In 1959 a Chest Department  was opened. The hospital continued to provide a small Casualty Department. By 1962 the hospital had 55 beds, 8 of which were in the maternity ward. The Out-Patients Department now contained a Casualty Department, with its own operating theatre, an X-Ray Department and a Physiotherapy Department. By 1984 the hospital had become a geriatric hospital with 57 beds but continued to offer out-patient services. In 1996 the hospital was placed under the control of Mayday Healthcare NHS Trust. 

In 2004 Mayday Hospital opened its Jubilee Wing and patients from Purley and District War Memorial Hospital were transferred and the wards closed. In 2010 the hospital was still in operation providing diagnostic and out-patient care. Following an £11m refurbishment, preserving many of the buildings historic features, Purley and District War Memorial Hospital reopened in 2013. It no longer provides in-patient beds and functions as a diagnostic and out-patient facility.

Warlingham Park Hospital

Formerly Croydon Borough Asylum/Croydon Mental Hospital

In 1889 Croydon was made a County Borough under the London Government Act 1888. One of its many new obligations was to build a pauper asylum. In the interim, the London County Council (LCC) asylum at  Cane Hill in Coulsdon continued to accept Croydon patients allocating one eight of its beds for this use. The Cane Hill Asylum was subsequently renamed London County Council Asylum with Provision for Croydon.

The Croydon Borough Asylum opened 26 June 1903 at Chelsham in a large rural setting, about one mile from the centre of Warlingham. It was designed by the Bristol architects Oatley and Skinner in the shape of an arrow; three male and three female blocks placed either side of the central administration and recreation area. Built of red brick, with large sash windows and grey slate roofing. An imposing feature was the 130ft water tower with decorative banding and a clock face on each of its four sides. In the surrounding acres of land it had a large chapel with its own burial ground. It had cost around £200,000. A year later Dr Edwin Pasmore, the first Medical Superintendent, recommended the asylum be renamed. It became the Croydon Mental Hospital. The name change gave the hospital a new status and access to the most up to date equipment. In 1910 the hospital was extended. It now had 650 beds which included a ward set aside for the physically sick. By 1926 the hospital had the highest recovery rate in England and Wales.

In 1927 Dr Thomas Percy Rees became Deputy Physician Superintendent (later Medical Superintendent) replacing Dr Edwin Pasmore who died that year. In the years that followed he introduced an open door approach to the care of patients; the iron gates at the entrance of the hospital were unlocked and remained so, wards were no longer locked during the day and restraint and isolation methods were all but abolished. In 1937 the hospital was renamed Warlingham Park Hospital.

In 1941 the hospital pioneered the first pre-frontal leucotomy surgery in the country. In 1948 the hospital joined the NHS under the control of the Warlingham Park Hospital Management Committee. The end of WW2 saw a considerable increase in admissions to long stay mental institutions and subsequent overcrowding. As a way to ease the burden, a psychiatric nursing service within the community was planned to provide support to discharged patients. This was realised in July 1954 with the appointment of two out-patient nurses (later renamed Community Psychiatric Nurses) Each nurse had a case load of 20 to 30 and the support of a Consultant Psychiatrist.

In 1957 a Social Centre opened for the patients providing among other things; a cafe, hairdressers, library and a full time chaplain. In that same year a BBC documentary, a forerunner on the subject of mental health, entitled ‘The Hurt Mind’ was televised. The first episode featured Warlingham Park Hospital. In 1964 the control of the hospital passed to the Croydon and Warlingham Park Group Hospital Management Committee.

By 1967 the hospital had 917 beds but was considered quite bleak with very little furniture. A visit from the Kings Fund (an independent charity promoting health care in England) revealed that in some wards there were as many as 60 beds with little or no room between each and staffing levels which seemed inadequate. In October of that year the chapel, being restored with funds from the Kings Fund, burned down leaving only the stonework. The hospital changed administration again in 1974 to Croydon District Health Authority.

The 1980s policy of a greater emphasis on ‘Care in the Community’  saw many patients resettled and less need for the long stay institutions. By 1990 the hospital had only 407 beds. The hospital closed in February 1999. It was demolished in 2000 with the exception of the Grade 11 listed water tower. The land was sold for new housing and is now Great Park with the water tower as its central feature.

Queens Road Hospital

In 1866, The Croydon Union Workhouse moved from Duppas Hill to a new 4.5 Acre site on Queens Road. The land and construction of the buildings cost £40,000. In 1879 two isolation hospitals, one for fever and one for smallpox patients, were built to the east of the main building (the smallpox hospital was later demolished). After the Board of Guardians was abolished in 1930, the Queen's Road Homes were taken over by the County Borough of Croydon, continuing to perform the same function (with a growing emphasis on the care of the elderly). In 1939, at the outbreak of war, the Homes were reclassified as a Class 2 Hospital under the Emergency Hospital Scheme; and as such received chronic sick cases.

In April 1941 the main part of the building was severely damaged by a land mine.  The northern wing and the chapel were completely destroyed.  Later, part of the southern wing was damaged by a high explosive bomb.. The hospital was taken over by the National Health Service (SW Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board) in 1948, when it was renamed Queen's Hospital, and became a geriatric hospital. By the end of the 1950s the Hospital consisted of five 'wings' or blocks containing 434 beds.  Block 4 was the 'residential' part of the original workhouse built in 1865, and had no lifts. Between 1961 - 1966, a first phase of upgrading was completed, replacing boilers and creating a new day hospital and outpatients, physiotherapy and occupational therapy departments. Bensham Lodge, an old people's home for 80 residents, was built on part of the site.It closed in 1987.