Medical dates:

Medical character:

The building opened in 1849 as the City of London Union Workhouse.  In 1874 it was converted into an infirmary for the same Union.   Mental patients came here for examination and assessment before being sent to other institutions or being discharged.  In 1902 it had 511 beds.

When the Homerton Workhouse reopened in 1909, the infirmary became superfluous and was closed.  However, it reopened in 1912 as the City of London Institution to treat the chronically ill.  It was later renamed the Bow Institution.

The LCC took over administration in 1930, when all the Boards of Guardians were abolished.  In 1933 the number of beds in the Institution was increased to 786 and a mental observation unit established.  In 1935 fire destroyed the west wing and the main building.  In 1936 the Institution was renamed St Clement's Hospital.

During WW2, when it had 397 beds, the Hospital was badly damaged by bombs in 1944.

In 1948 it joined the NHS and the bomb damage was repaired.  By 1959 the Hospital had become exclusively psychiatric.

It became part of the London Hospital Group in 1968 and was then called the London Hospital (St Clement's).  In 1974, after another NHS upheaval, it became part of the Tower Hamlets Health District, when it had 146 beds.  By 1979 it had 135 beds.

In 2003 the East London and The City Mental Health NHS Trust decided to sell the site for redevelopment.  

The Hospital closed in 2005, with clinical services moving to a new purpose-built adult mental health facility at Mile End Hospital.

Present status (June 2010)

The Hospital buildings are listed and the whole 4.57 acre site is within a conservation  area.

The site was sold for £20 million to English Partnerships (which has now become part of the Homes and Community Agency) for redevelopment as housing.  Local communities are campaiging for it to become the UK's first Community Land Trust.

  
Looking across Mile End Road to the Hospital frontage on Bow Road (January 2008).


The main administration building in Bow Road (photographed in January 2008).


The colourful street entrance (January 2008).

 
The lodge in Bow Road (left) with Hospital signage and a site map (right), photographed in June 2010.

    
 
The Bow Road frontage of the Hospital, with the windows boarded up in the derelict buildings.


    
The rather handsome wrought iron driveway gates (left).  A notice in memory of a patient who died in the Bow Institution in 1932 is pinned to their centre (right).

 

Signage declaring that this is a hospital. (left).  Signage declaring that this is no longer a hospital (right).




   
The east side of the Hospital - old ward buildings along British Street.

 
Looking north along British Street towards the southern ward blocks (left).  The plan for the Brokesley Estate, the Hospital's neighbour on the other side of British Street.

 
The old wall on the south side of the site (left) with an illegible tablet set in it, maybe making the parish border (right).

Apartment blocks in Brokesley Street, on the southwest corner of the Hospital site.

The Poplar boundary stone on the corner of St Clement's Hospital wall in Bow Road.