St Francis Hospital was a mental health facility in

Haywards Heath Haywards Heath ( ) is a town in West Sussex, England, south of London, north of Brighton, south of Gatwick Airport and northeast of the county town, Chichester. Nearby towns include Burgess Hill to the southwest, Horsham to the northwest, ...

West Sussex West Sussex is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Surrey to the north, East Sussex to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Hampshire to the west. The largest settlement is Cr ...

, England. The main building survives and is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

History

The hospital, which was designed by Henry Edward Kendall Jr. in the

Italianate style The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Ita ...

using a corridor plan layout, opened as the Sussex County Asylum in July 1859. An extra storey was added to the ward blocks in 1864. It became the Brighton County Borough Asylum in 1903 and the Brighton County Borough Mental Hospital in 1919 before joining the

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...

as St Francis Hospital in 1948. After the introduction of

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 c ...

in the early 1980s, the hospital went into a period of decline and part of the site was made available to facilitate the construction of the Princess Royal Hospital in the late 1980s. St Francis Hospital briefly became the west wing of the Princess Royal Hospital in 1992 but closed completely in November 1995. The site was subsequently developed for residential use as Southdowns Park.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Francis Hospital, Haywards Heath Hospitals in West Sussex Defunct hospitals in England Hospital buildings completed in 1859 Hospitals established in 1859 1859 establishments in England 1995 disestablishments in England Hospitals disestablished in 1995 Former psychiatric hospitals in England