Atkinson Morley Hospital

• Atkinson Morley Convalescent Home
• Atkinson Morley's Hospital

The hospital was originally built as a convalescent home for recovering patients from St George's Hospital (then at Hyde Park Corner), but became a brain surgery centre and was involved in the development of the CT scanner.

Atkinson Morley, a former medical student at St George's and a wealthy landowner and hotelier, left £100,000 in his will to St George's 'for receiving, maintaining and generally assisting convalescent poor patients', and the hospital opened in July 1869. It received patients from St George's initially on horse-drawn carriages, and from 1888 on an 'omnibus' accommodating 14 people.

It remained a convalescent home until 1939, and during the First World War it accommodated servicemen. The hospital was struggling financially, and gradually it began to admit more acute cases as well as tuberculosis patients. During the Second World War it became Atkinson Morley Emergency Hospital.

After the war, the hospital became an internationally recognised neuroscience centre, established by neurosurgeon Wylie McKissock. The Department of Psychiatry and an X-ray department specialising in neuroradiology were established in 1949; a Sleep Laboratory was established in 1972. The Wolfson Neurorehabilitation Centre was opened in 1967 to provide rehabilitation and outpatient services for the hospital. The hospital successfully introduced CT (computed tomography) scanning into medical practice in 1971 following a prototype scanner built by electronic engineer Godfrey Hounsfield, who was subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize for his invention in 1979.

The building closed in 2003, and neuroscience services were located to the Atkinson Morley Wing at St George's Hospital, Tooting; the Wolfson Neurorehabilitation Centre remained in Wimbledon.

Convalescent hospital; later neurological

The majority of records relating to Atkinson Morley Hospital are held at the London Metropolitan Archives, H68/AM

Lost Hospitals of London; Archives and Special Collections, St George's, University of London; Wikipedia; St George's NHS Trust