The hospital was established as an infirmary for sick paupers at the Willesden Workhouse in 1903.[1] Extensions were built in 1908, 1911 and 1914.[1] The facility became the Willesden Institution in 1914, the Park Royal Hospital in 1921 and the Central Middlesex County Hospital in 1931.[1]
In 1933 a new children's ward was opened by Sir George Newman.[2] The ward, which had 105 beds, had an innovative design, and attracted interested overseas visitors.[3] The ward was three storeys high with opening glass windows, walls decorated to half height by picture tiles and fireplaces surrounded by nursery rhyme tiles.[2][3] The tiles were made by W.B. Simpson and Son.[3]
The hospital was badly damaged by enemy bombing during the Second World War.[1] After the hospital joined the National Health Service in 1948, major additions included a maternity unit opened in 1966 and Ambulatory Care and Diagnostic Centre for out-patients opened in 1999.[1]
Extensive new facilities were procured under a Private Finance Initiative contract in 2003.[4] Under this scheme, while the Ambulatory Care and Diagnostic Centre built only a few years earlier was retained, most of the rest of the buildings on the site were demolished and a new Brent Emergency Care and Diagnostic Centre was created.[4] The works, which were designed by HLM Architects and Avanti Architects and carried out by Bouygues at a cost of £60 million, opened in 2006.[4]
12"Big hospital extension". West London Observer. 7 July 1933. p.12 – via British Newspaper Archive.
123Greene, John (1987). Brightening the long days: hospital tile pictures. Tiles and Architectural Ceramics Society. p.24. ISBN9780951211106. OCLC15595045.
