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Whittington Hospital
Whittington Hospital
Whittington Health NHS Trust
	The main entrance on Magdala Avenue
	Location within Islington
Geography
Location	Upper Holloway, London, N19, England, United Kingdom
Coordinates	51°33′59″N 0°08′22″W / 51.5665°N 0.1395°W
Organisation
Care system	NHS England
Type	Acute hospital trust
Affiliated university	University College London
Services
Emergency department	Yes Accident & Emergency
Beds	360
History
Opened	1473 activity on site; 1848 current hospital
Links
Website	www.whittington.nhs.uk
Lists	Hospitals in England

Whittington Hospital is a district general and teaching hospital of UCL Medical School and Middlesex University School of Health and Social Sciences. Located in Upper Holloway, it is managed by Whittington Health NHS Trust, operating as Whittington Health, an integrated care organisation providing hospital and community health services in the north London boroughs of Islington and Haringey. Its Jenner Building, a former smallpox hospital, is a Grade II listed building.^[1]

History

The first hospital on the site was St Anthony's Chapel and Lazar House, a facility built for lepers in 1473.^[2] It closed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the mid-16th century.^[2]

The current hospital has its origins in the Small Pox and Vaccination Hospital, built in 1848.^[3] It was designed by the architect Samuel Daukes as one of two isolation hospitals in London (the other was the London Fever Hospital in Liverpool Road) intended to care for smallpox patients during the epidemic at that time.^[4] The hospital, instituted in 1746, was removed from the original central London site to make way for the building of King’s Cross station.^[5]

After smallpox treatment services transferred to Clare Hall Manor at South Mimms in 1896, the hospital was officially re-opened by the Duke and Duchess of York as a workhouse infirmary with the addition of a large adjacent building in 1900.^[3] Originally called Highgate Hill Infirmary, in 1914, it became Islington Infirmary and by 1920, five linked blocks had been added to the south of the original building. The hospital was taken over by the London County Council in 1930 and renamed St Mary's Hospital.^[3]

In 1948, St Mary's Hospital (subsequently known as St Mary's Wing) amalgamated with Highgate Hospital (subsequently known as Highgate Wing) and Archway Hospital (subsequently known as Archway Wing) to form the Whittington Hospital.^[3] The three hospitals had been brought together under the control of the Archway Group Hospital Management Committee on the establishment of the National Health Service in 1946. The combined facility was named after Sir Richard Whittington, an English merchant, who had left a large sum to charitable causes supporting people in need.^[6]

In 1977, a new block containing accident and emergency and outpatient facilities was opened by the North West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board on the St Mary's Wing site on Highgate Hill.^[3] Further expansion took place in 1983, when the City of London Maternity Hospital was closed and amalgamated with the Obstetric Unit to form the City of London Maternity Unit.^[7] The Great Northern Building, containing modern wards and education facilities, was completed in 1992.^[3]

In 1998, the Archway Wing was sold to University College London and Middlesex University allowing them to form the Archway campus^[8] and, in 2004, the Highgate Wing was chosen by Camden and Islington Community NHS Trust as the site for Highgate Mental Health Centre.^[9]

With all clinical activities consolidated on the central St Mary's Wing site, a new clinical block and main entrance on Magdala Avenue were procured under the private finance initiative contract.^[10] The works, which were undertaken by Jarvis Construction at a cost of £30 million, were completed in 2006.^[11]

Performance

Following an inspection in December 2015 of the Trust and its services, Whittington Health was rated as Good by the Care Quality Commission in July 2016 – with caring rated as Outstanding.^[12] The Trust has a current deficit of £5.9m for the year ending 2016/17 – £200k worse than its planned position.^[13]

Legacy

A statue commissioned by the Nubian Jak Community Trust, in collaboration with the Whittington Health NHS Trust and Haringey Council, to honour the contributions of Windrush and Commonwealth NHS nurses and midwives, was unveiled outside the hospital in September 2021, in association with the launch of an anthology compiled by Jak Beula, entitled Nursing a Nation.^[14]^[15]^[16]

Notable staff

Edith Cavell (1865 – 1915), British nurse celebrated for treating soldiers from both sides during the First World War and assisting 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium, for which she was tried and executed. Night superintendent in 1901 at Highgate Hospital, which became the Whittington Hospital.^[17]

Trevor Clay CBE (1936–1994), General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing from 1982 to 1989, Matron Whittington Hospital, from 1969 to 1970.^[18]

References

^ Historic England. "F Block, St Mary's Wing, Whittington Hospital (1195634)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
^ ^a ^b "Whittington Hospital". Living in Archway. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f "St Mary's Hospital". Lost Hospitals of London. Retrieved 2 July 2018.
^ "The London Fever Hospital". The Spectator. 12 January 1924. p. 14. Retrieved 6 July 2018.
^ Whitehead, Andrew How the Whittington site was home to Highgate's vaccination hospital Hampstead & Highgate Express, 18 April 2021
^ "Charitable Trusts". Worshipful Company of Mercers. Retrieved 5 March 2012.
^ "City of London Maternity Hospital". Lost Hospitals of London. Retrieved 11 July 2018.
^ "Archway Campus site background". The Governors of the Peabody Trust. Retrieved 31 March 2017.
^ Foot, Tom (17 March 2011). "Lost souls beyond a plush entrance to Highgate Mental Health Centre". Camden New Journal. Retrieved 2 July 2018.
^ "Jarvis wins £80m Whittington work". Evening Standard. 12 November 2001. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
^ "Further setback at hospital delayed by Jarvis troubles". Building. 13 January 2006. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
^ "Whittington Health rated as "Good" by CQC". whittington.nhs.uk. Retrieved 23 October 2017.
^ "Trust Board Papers". The Whittington Hospital NHS Trust. 1 March 2017. Retrieved 1 July 2018.
^ Tapper, James (11 September 2021). "Statue celebrating the NHS's Windrush nurses". The Guardian.
^ "A statue is unveiled outside Whittington Health NHS Trust". Whittington Health NHS Trust. 13 September 2021. Retrieved 10 October 2021.
^ Cobbinah, Angela (8 October 2021). "NHS SOS". Islington Tribune. Retrieved 14 November 2021.
^ ""Appointments."". The Nursing Record. Vol. 31, no. 816. 21 November 1903. p. 406.
^ Matthew, H. C. G.; Harrison, B., eds. (23 September 2004), "The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/54813, retrieved 11 July 2024

External links

"Our history". The Whittington Hospital. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
"Supporting the Whittington". Whittington Facilities Limited. Retrieved 6 September 2019.