page_title: Brookwood Hospital
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Brookwood Hospital / History
caption_attribution_description: Brookwood Lunatic Asylum Fancy Dress Ball. General Collections Keywords: Institutions
context_page_description: Brookwood Hospital at Woking in Surrey, was established in 1867 by Surrey Quarter Sessions as the second County Asylum, the first being Springfield Asylum in Tooting. A third asylum, Cane Hill Hospital at Coulsdon in the eastern part of the county, followed in 1882.
context_section_description: The facility, which was designed by Charles Henry Howell, the principal asylum architect in England and architect to the Lunacy Commissioners and Surrey County Surveyor from 1860–1893, was opened as the Brookwood Asylum on 17 June 1867. It was the leading mental hospital for the western half of Surrey, occupying a large site at Knaphill, near Brookwood. The hospital had a dairy farm, a cobbler's workshop, a large ballroom, its own fire brigade, gasworks and sewage farm and employed the services of many local businesses. The chapel, which could seat 800, opened in 1903. The facility became known as Brookwood Hospital in 1919.
  During the Second World War the hospital served as an emergency war hospital and it joined the National Health Service in 1948 and a library and conference centre were built in 1967.
  It was occupied by staff protesting about staff shortages in 1982. Only 420 were in post out of an establishment of 805. It eventually closed in 1994.
  Since the hospital's closure the land has been sold off for development for housing, and the clock tower and the central building around it, which is listed, has been converted into luxury apartments. Several of the new residential roads were named after the old hospital wards. The hospital's chapel is now a Buddhist temple and the former mortuary now provides living accommodation for the temple's monks. A large two-storey building that was originally the hospital's social club has been converted and registered as a children’s day care centre and nursery.
caption: Depiction of a fancy dress ball at Brookwood Asylum shown in The Illustrated London News, 1881.
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