A Curious Invitation present London Month of the Dead
CITY OF LOST HOSPITALS
London's Eccentric Medical Past
A Guided Tour with Dr Tom Bolton
Saturday 10th October 2020 at 2:30 pm


Before the arrival of the NHS, London had more than 500 hospitals, including a host of small, specialist, sometimes eccentric institutions. Most have vanished, but they have all left a trace, from the oddly shaped space on the New Kent Road that once housed Britain’s first vegetarian hospital, to the large hole in the ground where the National Temperance Hospital stood until 2017, when it was demolished for HS2.

Dr Tom Bolton, who has written about lost hospitals for the Wellcome Trust, will lead an walking tour of the familiar and the strange, locating some City hospitals that still lie in plain sight, and a selection that have been obscured and erased. Visiting sites near Old Street, the tour will explore the hidden history of healthcare in the city.

Due to the surge in Covid-19 cases, this tour has now been cancelled. We are currently working on a digita audio guide to replace the group tours.

Tom Bolton is a writer, researcher and photographer who lives and works in London. He is the author of four books that look at the hidden city and landscape of London and Essex. He is also an urban policy researcher working at Centre for Cities, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment and the National Trust.