Bromley Borough Local History Society
Registered Charity
No. 273 963
Bromley Borough Local History Society
Farnborough Hospital 1999
Farnborough Hospital in 1999
These pictures of Farnborough Hospital were taken on New Year’s Eve 1999. The buildings were demolished over the next two years. They were taken by a nurse who had worked there from 1970 – 1994. The information on each picture caption is her recollections of how the buildings were used during that period.
Not all of these are captured in this series of pictures as by 1999 some buildings had already been demolished, including the hutted accommodation, at the rear of the site backing onto Starts Hill Road, which had been the medical wards. Areas at the back of the site were fenced off ready for the ground work on the construction of the Princess Royal University Hospital (PRUH) to begin. Most of the buildings pictured here were used until the PRUH became completely operational. They then made way for the private housing and hospital car park which covers the old work house location. Only the chapel remains to provide a precise location point of the old buildings but the map below based on an OS 1970 map overlaid on the current hospital may help to clarify the extent of both the old hospital and the changes made.
Farnborough Hospital was originally the Bromley Union Workhouse, opened in 1844. Although by 1928 it was in effect a hospital rather than a workhouse, it was not until 1936 that it became formally titled ‘Farnborough County Hospital’. Over the decades more and more buildings were added to the site and by the late 20th century it was a hotchpotch of buildings. The original late Victorian buildings with additions from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and hutted accommodation from the Second World War. There was also a 1950s' maternity block which had replaced the earliest of the workhouse buildings. As the century progressed there were various extensions to buildings in a variety of building materials, brick extensions, wooden huts and portable cabins and, in the later 20th century, some new build.
If you remember the hospital and can add any more information or have pictures of other parts of the hospital complex which we could add to this collection drop a line to admin@bblhs.org.uk
