Catalogue description Warlingham Park Hospital

These records are arranged in the Australian Records Series System, and the catalogue has been adapted for display on Discovery. There may be some slight differences in description between this entry and the initial cataloguing work.

Warlingham Park Hospital

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In 1893 the Croydon Borough Visiting Committee reported that their agreement with the London County Council to house the Boroughs mentally unwell citizens had been extended 5 years, but would probably not be extended after that. Up until this point Croydon had placed people in Cane Hill Asylum and other private ‘madhouses’, but this news placed the onus on the Borough to find new accommodation for the 203 men women and children it had responsibility for. The Council agreed to find suitable accommodation, and purchased a 70 acre site at Kennel Farm, Chelsham fir the purposes of building their own asylum in 1897. The Croydon Mental Hospital was built by Messrs H Wilcock & Co at the cost of £236,159 and was open to receiving patients in 1903. The Hospital was built on the county asylum model, and initially held 437 patients. Extensions were built throughout the 1920s to accommodate more patients, and by 1933 the Hospital could treat 800 patients. Dr Thomas Percy Rees was employed as Medical Superintendent in 1935, and he began moves to bring care into line with more progressive methods. He unlocked the front gates and front doors of the Hospital, and changed the name to Warlingham Park in 1937. He also instituted occupational therapy treatment regimes, and tried to give his patients skills they could use in their lives outside the Hospital. The Hospital came into the NHS in 1948. In the 1950s, with an overcrowded population of over 1000 patients, the Hospital invested heavily in community services and outpatient services, and by the late 1960s had opened four ‘day hospitals’. From 1971 to 1983 the number of beds onsite was reduced from 847 to 475. The Hospital suffered two fires, one in 1966 which burned down the Chapel, and another in 1981 which killed 7 elderly patients.In 1975 a Committee of Inquiry set up to investigate a spate of suicides in the Hospital criticised the high level of patient turnover and the low level of staffing. In the NHS restructuring of local health care of the early 1990s, Croydon Health Authority proposed the closing of Warlingham Park, and its services transferred to other organisations, with acute services provided at Queens Hospital. Warlingham Park came under the responsibility of the Bethlem and Maudsley NHS Trust in April 1995, and was closed in 1999.

See Crehan et al, ‘Warlingham Park Hospital 1903-1999’