page_title: Knowle Hospital
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Knowle Hospital / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Housing in Knowle Village, Hampshire, UK, on the site of the former Hampshire County Lunatic Asylum. The new housing to the left of the picture very closely matching the redeveloped hospital buildings evident on the right of the picture. Taken 4th July 2007.
context_page_description: Knowle Hospital, was a psychiatric hospital in the village of Knowle near the town of Fareham in Hampshire, southern England, which opened in 1852 and closed in 1996.
context_section_description: A committee of nine JPs were appointed at the Easter Quarter Sessions in 1846 to superintend the erecting or providing of a lunatic asylum for Hampshire. They selected Knowle Farm as the most suitable available site, comprising 108 acres (0.43706  km2). The asylum was designed by James Harris and the new facility, known as the Hampshire County Lunatic Asylum, opened in December 1852.
  For about a year, in 1857/58, one of the gardeners at Knowle, Henry Coe, engaged in a personal correspondence with Charles Darwin concerning horticultural matters, especially about the cultivation of kidney beans. As a result of this correspondence, Darwin became involved in a minor dispute about the legality of a patient's detention at Knowle. Following his recovery and discharge, the patient wrote to Darwin, thanking him for taking a personal interest. A chapel was built on the site in 1875.
  The asylum was renamed Knowle Mental Hospital in 1923 and then became Knowle Hospital in 1948.
  In the late 1960s, Dr Ronald A. Sandison, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist who pioneered the clinical use of LSD in psychiatry, worked at Knowle Hospital.
  During the 1970s, plans were drawn up to close the large county mental asylums and in 1979 mental health services for Southampton and south west Hampshire were moved to a newly established Department of Psychiatry at Royal South Hants Hospital in Southampton.
  Part of the hospital site was home to the Hampshire Ambulance Service Knowle Training School in the 1980s.
  After services transferred to Gosport War Memorial Hospital and to other local facilities, Knowle Hospital closed in 1996. The site was subsequently redeveloped for residential use as Knowle Village.
caption: New and old buildings forming Knowle Village
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