A Clearer, Bluer Sky: Exhibition Opens Next Week

For almost 700 years, Bethlem Royal Hospital was situated in the heart of London; first of all in the City, at Bishopsgate and Moorfields, and finally just south of the River Thames at St George’s Fields.

In the early 1920s, the Governors decided to move the hospital to its present location on the Kent / Surrey borders, and purchased the Monks Orchard Estate. The hospital chaplain, Edward O’Donoghue, paid several visits to the site prior to the move and wrote about his visits for Bethlem’s magazine Under the Dome. He wrote: It was on a solitary day of sunshine in the midst of a week of rain that I adventured forth to catch a glimpse of the park, in Kent, upon which the fourth Bethlehem Hospital is to rise into a clearer, bluer sky.

This exhibition explores the conversion of the site from country estate to modern hospital through maps, archive photographs and art from the reserve collection of Bethlem’s Archives and Museum.

Exhibition details:

Opening Event (all welcome): 11 January 2012, 3 - 6pm Exhibition continues: 12 January – 3 February Opening times: Wed, Thurs, Friday, 11am – 6pm Gallery & Museum open Saturday 14 January, 11am - 5pm

Address: The Bethlem Gallery, Bethlem Royal Hospital, Monks Orchard Road, Beckenham, Kent BR3 3BX Nearest British Rail: Eden Park / East Croydon