Memorial Hospital, Woolwich

Hall of Remembrance within the hospital

After the First World War, a fund was set up to raise the anticipated £50,000 cost of the new hospital building to be a lasting memorial for the war dead from the local area and to replace the Woolwich and Plumstead Cottage Hospital.[1][2] The site selected was Telegraph Field (so named as it was once used as a semaphore station).[2]

In 1925 the Duke of Connaught laid the foundation stone and, in 1927, the 112-bed Woolwich and District Hospital Association Cottage Hospital was officially opened by the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth).[3] By 1930 it was known as the Woolwich and District War Memorial Hospital, then (from 1931) the Woolwich and District Hospital Association War Memorial Hospital and (from 1938) the Memorial Hospital.[2]

During the Second World War it became a military hospital (in 1944 it had 137 beds), providing back-up facilities for the nearby Royal Herbert Hospital. In 1948, it joined the National Health Service as a general hospital. For some years in the 1960s it specialised in surgery, before transferring medical beds to the nearby Brook General Hospital and becoming a geriatric hospital in the 1970s.[2]

Since at least 2005, it has been run by the Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust,[4] and mainly functions as a day centre for the elderly while also offering facilities for psychiatric patients.[5]

• Official site