Darenth Park Hospital was a healthcare facility in

Darenth Darenth is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Dartford, Kent, England. It is located 3.4 miles south east of Dartford and 4.6 miles north east of Swanley. History The parish was part of Axstane Hundred and later Dartford Rural Dis ...

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Dartford Dartford is the principal town in the Borough of Dartford, Kent, England. It is located south-east of Central London and is situated adjacent to the London Borough of Bexley to its west. To its north, across the Thames estuary, is Thurrock in ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, originally founded as Darenth School.

History

The hospital was founded by the

Metropolitan Asylums Board The Metropolitan Asylums Board (MAB) was established under Poor Law legislation to deal with London's sick and poor. It was established by the Metropolitan Poor Act 1867 and dissolved in 1930, when its functions were transferred to the London Count ...

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as Darenth School for 500 children with learning disabilities on 18 November 1878. By 1890 it housed over 1,000 children and adults and included Darenth Asylum. By 1911 part of the site has become the Darenth Industrial Trading Colony, and the institution was becoming almost self-sufficient in food production and the manufacture of everyday items, thanks to its ample supply of free labour. In 1936, as the age and disability levels of residents increased, the name became Darenth Park Hospital, and in 1948 the management was transferred from the

London County Council London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today kno ...

, which had succeeded the Metropolitan Asylums Board in the management of the institution, to the new

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...

. The hospital drew patients from a wide catchment of south-east London and Kent. By 1970 the population had grown to 1,500 and the physical conditions in this grim and vast Victorian building were increasingly unacceptable by modern standards. The hospital had over 40 wards, of which 10 contained more than 50 residents. Finally in 1973 the Regional Health Board agreed to close Darenth, but the funding and planning required for such a major undertaking took years to put in place. In the mid-1970s,

Diana Spencer Diana, Princess of Wales (born Diana Frances Spencer; 1 July 1961 – 31 August 1997) was a member of the British royal family. She was the first wife of King Charles III (then Prince of Wales) and mother of Princes William and Harry. Her ac ...

, the future Princess of Wales, undertook voluntary work at the hospital. Darenth Park was the first large regional learning disability institution to close in England as a result of the British government's emerging

Care in the Community Care in the Community (also called "Community Care" or "Domiciliary Care") is a British policy of deinstitutionalisation, treating and caring for physically and mentally disabled people in their homes rather than in an institution. Institutional ca ...

policy. Audrey Emerton, the South East Thames Regional Chief nursing officer between 1979 and 1990, guided the replacement programme, and from the early 1980s on nearly a thousand residents were resettled to other hospitals, hostels, small group homes and local facilities. In August 1988 the last residents were transferred and the hospital finally shut its doors. The buildings have been entirely demolished and the new

Darent Valley Hospital Darent Valley Hospital is a 478-bed, acute district general hospital in Dartford, Kent, England. The hospital has an Emergency Department. The hospital is managed by the Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust. History The hospital, which was built to ...

has been built on part of the site. A 'village' of 300 new houses was also built and the remaining 100 acres became the Darenth Country Park. The only building surviving from the Asylum is at the former Darenth Park Hospital Farm, now used as the Arrow Riding Centre.

References

External links

Dartford Hospital Histories
{{authority control 1878 establishments in England Defunct hospitals in London Former psychiatric hospitals in England 1988 disestablishments Hospitals in Kent

History

See also

References

Further reading

External links