Charing Cross Hospital

Charing Cross Hospital is on the site of the Fulham Union Workhouse, which opened in 1850 to cater for 450 poor people. An Italianate style building, it was immediately put to use to care for victims of London's cholera outbreak of 1848/9. By 1854 those in need of its accommodation and medical attention had risen to 550 and new wings and infirmaries were added by 1871, which were again soon outstripped by need. In 1880 additional land was purchased by the Fulham Board of Guardians and a new Infirmary opened in 1884, which later became a general hospital run by the LCC. In 1906 an operating theatre was added and in WWI Fulham Infirmary became a Military Hospital, where around 1,000 wounded from the Battle of the Somme were treated as well as German prisoners of war. In 1918 it cared for those who suffered from the outbreak of Spanish 'flu that devastated London. Eventually Fulham Hospital was demolished in 1966 when it was decided to erect the new Charing Cross Hospital here. The 17-storey hospital was designed by Ralph Tubbs in cruciform arrangement providing 900 beds. It now has state of the art medical facilities and a medical school on the east of the site. Tubbs also designed the hopital chapel, which has stained glass by John Piper.

Within the landscaped grounds are a number of garden areas, some of which contain sculptures. In 1975 Henry Moore (1898-1986) loaned the hospital a half-size working model of his abstract 'Reclining Figure' at the Lincoln Centre of Performing Arts in New York; it was installed in the water garden outside the hospital entrance, a position chosen by Moore himself. When Moore's work was given to the Tate Gallery in 1978 its loan to the hospital was extended. A basement-level cobbled courtyard has as its centrepiece the bronze 'Horse and Rider' by Robert Clatworthy (1983), which has been on loan from the British Land Company since 1995, which is accessible only from the hospital but can be viewed from the entrance level. An abstract stone sculpture by Tadeusz Koper (1965) is on the grass by the car park exit south of the main entrance, donated by the artist who was a patient at the hospital in 1975. The wrought iron weathervane from the old Fulham Infirmary of 1884 is in the garden behind the main hospital building with a plaque inscribed: 'The Weathervane was preserved from the old Fulham Hospital - formerly known as the Fulham Infirmary built in 1884 by the Board of Guardians to house the sick who had previously been cared for in the workhouse on the site of Charing Cross Hospital.' The hospital also has a number of works of art in its interior spaces, including tile murals of rural workers that were once in the dining room of the workhouse.