Medical dates:

Medical character:

Sidcup Cottage Hospital opened in 1882 at No. 1 Clarence Villas, Birkbeck Road.  It had 8 beds but soon the premises proved cramped and unsatisfactory.  Plans were made to build a new hospital.

Building work began in 1889 and the second Sidcup Cottage Hospital, on the corrner of Birkbeck and Granville Roads, opened in 1890.  It had 12 beds and had cost £1,825 to build.  Its two wards were named after former matrons - Callan and Purser.

In 1894 a mortuary was added to the site.

In 1898 the Hospital was extended and an operating room installed.

In 1925 an annexe was built for electrical treatments.  An X-ray apparatus was acquired.  The Hospital also had a Casualty Department.

The Hospital regularly received gifts of fruit, flowers, eggs, biscuits and cakes, books, newspapers and magazines.

In 1926 the average length of stay for an in-patient was 14 days, compared to 13 in 1925 and 17 in 1924.  The weekly average number of in-patients was seven, a bed occupancy of 60%.  In 1926 the average weekly cost of an in-patient was 95 shillings (£4.75), compared to 87 shillings and 8 pence (£4.38) in 1925 and 85 shillings and 10 pence (£4.29) in 1924.

In 1937 a Physiotherapy Department opened and, in 1938, new wards were added.

The Hospital joined the Emergency Medical Service at the outbreak of WW2 in 1939.  It had 13 beds.  The average length of stay for in-patients was 10 days.

In 1948 it joined the NHS as a general hospital with 14 beds under the control of the Sidcup and Swanley Hospital Management Committee, part of the South East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board.

In 1952 the Hospital was redecorated internally and externally.

In the same year, operating sessions for tonsil and adenoid removal were transferred to Queen Mary's Hospital.  The Hospital then became a G.P.  hospital with 15 beds.  Patients stayed on average for 7 days (by the following year this had increased to 32 days!).

By 1954 it was a busy G.P. hospital, but uneconomical in terms of nursing staff.

In 1966 the Hospital had 15 acute beds and was under the control of the Sidcup Group Hospital Medical Committee.

Following a major reorganisation of the NHS in 1974, the Hospital was deemed financially unviable.  It closed that year; services were transferred to Queen Mary's Hospital.

Present status (January 2002)

The Hospital was demolished in 1977 and the Sidcup Health Centre built on its site.  This was later renamed the Barnard Medical Practice.