Geograph - photograph every grid square

Orchard Hill (formerly Queen Mary's Hospital) Carshalton, Surrey SM5

Orchard Hill, run by Sutton and Merton Primary Care Trust, is an old long-stay hospital that provides a home to over 100 adults with learning and physical disabilities. In 1896, the Metropolitan Asylums Board acquired a 136-acre site at Carshalton on which they intended to construct a 800-bed convalescent hospital, to be known as the Southern Hospital. Buildings for this purpose were erected on the site in 1907-8. However, on 1st September 1908, the MAB was given the additional responsibility of dealing with "sick or convalescent or debilitated children". It was therefore decided to adapt Carshalton as a general hospital for one thousand children under the name of the Children's Hospital. The former Gore Farm Hospital at Darenth, previously mainly used by convalescing smallpox patients, took on a more general convalescent role and also inherited the name of the Southern Hospital. In 1914, following the accession of King George the Fifth and Queen Mary to the throne, the Children's Hospital was renamed Queen Mary's Hospital for Children.