Cranleigh Village Hospital’s OLD, UNUSED buildings
The Cottage, built in the 15th Century, belonged to St Nicolas church. In the 19th Century it was used in an emergency for a local Doctor to operate on an injured man, and this led the church to decide to give the cottage to Cranleigh Village to use as a Cottage Hospital. It was the first Cottage hospital in the Country. Extensions were built with locally fund raised money. The oldest part is Grade 11 listed.
Now these areas lie idle and are full of unused stuff. NHS Properties owns all the buildings and ensures these empty parts have electric heating radiators and working fire alarms.
Otherwise the buildings both inside and outside are deteriorating for want of decisions being made. (When you see an NHS Properties van outside the hospital it is John attending to the used clinical areas along with manager Alison.)
We have complained to NHS properties and we want to help them, Waverley Borough Council’s heritage department, and others, to save these buildings and further – allow Cranleigh community to be able to legally and physically use them for local purposes. Ideas that could be sustainable include using delicate parts as a museum, the sitting area for meetings including with mental health at their heart, and the rear parts could be brought back into clinical uses such as minor injuries service if it could be staffed. The League of Friends are hoping for an MRI scanner area to be made.
We have drawn up architect’s plans to work with, and hope next to get various surveyors’ reports to find out what it will take for each part to be usable again.
There are so many people who want to see this happen, and Cranleigh Society is working with them, especially League of Friends.
It took Cranleigh In Bloom volunteer gardeners at the old hospital to bring the real problems to our attention – and we are happy to work on this going into the future.
We are not spending any money at the moment – all the work so far is being done by volunteers – who will also work on getting grants if necessary. In the meantime the building should be saved and prepared for use by NHS Properties, but we have bitter experience of waiting for the NHS and now is not the time to sit back and expect them to get on with this project – Covid is taking all their strength and we are very much aware of this and in no way want to take their attention away from us all benefitting from their hard work.
https://www.cranleighmagazine.co.uk/cranleigh-old-village-hospital/
