St Augustine's Hospital

St Augustine’s Hospital was a psychiatric hospital in Chartham, Kent, England. It was founded as the second, or East, Kent County Asylum in 1872. In 1948 the hospital became part of the National Health Service and was renamed St Augustine's Hospital. The hospital gained notoriety in the 1970s when it was the subject of a committee of inquiry into malpractice and mismanagement. St Augustine's Hospital closed in 1993 and the site is now occupied by housing, although a few of the original hospital buildings remain.

When it became clear in the early 1870s that the Kent County Asylum at Barming Heath, Maidstone, was no longer large enough to accommodate all the county's pauper lunatics, a search began for a site for a second county asylum as the 1845 Lunacy Act had made it obligatory to provide asylums. A 120-acre site on Chartham Downs three miles south-west of Canterbury was chosen. It satisfied the requirements set down by the Commissioners in Lunacy: a site on elevated ground with cheerful prospects and enough space to provide employment and recreation for inmates while preventing them being overlooked or disturbed by strangers.

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