Holloway Sanatorium - Brief History

Brief History

The site of Holloway Sanatorium is the present 'Virginia Park' development in Virginia Water, on the west side of Stroude Road and to the north of the railway station. It was one of two important symbols of the vision of the Victorian multi-millionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist, Thomas Holloway (1800–1883): the other being the nearby Royal Holloway College in Egham, Surrey (now Royal Holloway, University of London) which was opened two years later. Like the College, the Sanatorium was an extraordinary and extensive building, founded and personally funded by Holloway as a 'Gift to the Nation', and it was the fruit of the partnership between Holloway and his principal architect William Henry Crossland (1835–1908). The architecture was inspired by the gothic styles of the Cloth Hall of Ypres in Belgium with its conspicuous tower, and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.

Work started on the building of the Sanatorium in 1873. The institution, 'a hospital for the insane of the middle class', was opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales (later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra) in 1885. There were 73 certified patients admitted in the first year, and the number increased steadily so that in 1892 it already exceeded its capacity for 600 patients. A board of trustees managed the Sanatorium until it passed to the National Health Service in 1948. After becoming redundant to the NHS in 1981, it became derelict, vandalised and pillaged for the next 12 years. In 1994 the Sanatorium was re-developed, and to a great extent restored, to become in the year 2000 a gated residential estate.