Brentford Hospital x Brentford Dispensary x Brentford Cottage Hospital and Nurses Home

Brentford Hospital x Brentford Dispensary x Brentford Cottage Hospital and Nurses Home

Brentford Hospital originated in Brentford Dispensary founded in 1818. The parish records of Saint Laurence, New Brentford, include an annual report of Brentford Dispensary for 1928 (DRO58/131) and an account book for 1852-1895 (DRO58/132/1). In 1891 the dispensary committee leased Marlborough House in the Butts as a residence for nurses to care for the sick poor in their own homes and to provide accommodation for some patients. Brentford Cottage Hospital and Nurses Home opened in 1892. The committee was subsequently able to purchase Marlborough House.

Between 1927 and 1928 a new larger hospital was built in Boston Manor Road, Brentford, on a site of over an acre, part of Gale's Orchard. Although it was now known as Brentford Hospital, it remained a general practitioner hospital with beds for 33 inpatients. In 1954 visitors from King Edward's Hospital Fund for London described it as "a very pleasant general practitioner hospital built in 1928. There are six general practitioners on the staff and we gathered that nearly all the patients come from them, except those that come through the Emergency Bed Service. There are medical and surgical consultants, the latter do the operating" (A/KE/735/48).

In 1948 Brentford Hospital was transferred to the National Health Service. It became one of the South West Middlesex group of hospitals of the North West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board. In 1974 Brentford Hospital came under the control of Ealing, Hammersmith and Hounslow Area Health Authority (Teaching) as part of Hounslow Health District. After 1976 it ceased to be used as an acute hospital, it reopened late in 1979 as a long stay geriatric hospital. In 1982 it became the responsibility of Hounslow and Spelthorne Health Authority.