- Corporate body
- 1893-1964
Opened in 1893 by the Metropolitan Asylums Board (MAB) during an epidemic of scarlet fever. Initially conceived of as an annex to the adjacent Grove Fever Hospital, opened in 1899.
The hospital was removed in 1911 by MAB from its isolation hospitals service. It was reopened in 1912 as a mental hospital for 'unimprovable imbeciles' and renamed the Fountain Mental Hospital. A school was established in 1917 for the children in the hospital.
The hospital was hit by a bomb in 1944 during the Second World War and many parts of it destroyed.
In 1948 the hospital joined the NHS and became the Fountain Hospital, under the control of the Fountain Group Hospital Management Committee. A new X-ray department was established in 1950, but the old buildings, intended to be temporary, were not replaced by more permanent buildings as the site was decided to use to move St George's Hospital to from Hyde Park Corner. The Fountain Hospital was in the 1950s severely overcrowded and the temporary huts were dilapidated. The hospital merged with Queen Mary's Hospital in 1959, becoming the Fountain and Carshalton Group; patients and services were transferred to Queen Mary's Hospital, which was underused and under the threat of closure.
The Mental Health Act 1959 improved the position of the patients, and Queen Mary's Hospital became a comprehensive children's hospital for mental and physical disorders and diseases.
The Fountain Hospital closed in 1963; many of the patients were transferred to St Ebba's Hospital in Epsom and to Queen Mary's Hospital. The buildings were demolished and the site is now occupied by St George's Hospital and St George's, University of London.