Tooting Military Hospital - Green Plaque site

About Tooting Military Hospital - Green Plaque site

In 1897 the former St Joseph's Roman Catholic College was taken over by the Wandsworth Board of Guardians to provide extra workhouse accommodation. The site, which contained Hill House (the original manor house), had originally been bought by St Joseph's Teaching Brotherhood. They built the college, which opened as a Roman Catholic school in 1887. However, the upkeep proved too expensive and the school moved to Beulah Hill in 1895.  The three storey College building was renamed the Tooting Home for the Aged and Infirm. Hill House, became the Nurses' Home.

During WW1 the Home was taken over by the War Office and became the Church Lane Military Hospital (also known as the Tooting Military Hospital). It had 712 beds for enlisted servicemen. After the war the Ministry of Pensions used it as a neurological hospital for shell-shocked and neurasthenic ex-servicemen until 1923. The buildings then became empty and derelict. In 1930 the LCC bought the site and it reopened in 1931 as St Benedict's Hospital. The hospital joined the NHS in 1948 and following reorganisation of the NHS in 1974, the hospital came under the control of the Wandsworth and East Merton (Teaching) District Health Authority, part of the South West Thames Regional Health Authority. It closed in 1981.

Housing now occupies the site. The southern corner below Church Lane contains St Benedicts, a private estate of small houses and apartments. The only surviving remnants of the hospital buildings are the entrance gateway with its posts on Church Lane (the inscriptions on them are almost illegible), and the main block's portico and clock tower, which have been preserved in the grounds of the modern development.

Location: Church Lane, SW17.

Unveiled: 9 March 2016.

Contact

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Email: wandsworth.libraries@gll.org