London Month of the Dead - London's Lost Hospitals

LONDON'S LOST HOSPITALS From Medieval Hospitals to Floating Fever Ships At Guy's Hospital Chapel with Tom Bolton on Thursday 14th May 2026 at 7 pm London is a city of lost hospitals. Before the arrival of the NHS, more than 500 hospitals sought to aid the capital’s population, including a host of small, specialist and sometimes eccentric institutions. Most have now vanished, yet many still retain a shadowy presence in familiar neighbourhoods, from the oddly shaped site on the New Kent Road that once housed Britain’s first vegetarian hospital to the great void left by the National Temperance Hospital, demolished in 2017 for HS2. As part of the city’s annual Medi-culture festival, join Dr Tom Bolton, who has written on London’s lost hospitals for the Wellcome Trust, on a journey through the hidden history of healthcare in the capital. Exploring abandoned Victorian institutions, peculiar medical buildings reassigned to new uses and sites erased almost entirely from the landscape, the talk uncovers the traces left behind by London’s vast medical past. Many of these hospitals have left physical remnants, some have transformed into new forms of care giving, while others survive only in street patterns, archives and local memory. Together they reveal changing attitudes towards disease, medicine and the social history of the city itself. Our venue for the evening will be the wonderful gothic chapel at Guy’s Hospital, which is celebrating the 300 year anniversary of its founding. Tickets £12.50 including a Gothic Punch and 20% donation to the King's Chaplaincy Trust to support medical students. Please click here to purchase. Tom Bolton Tom Bolton is a writer and researcher whose books uncover the hidden geographies and histories of London and its margins. He is the author of Vanished City, London’s Lost Rivers Volumes 1 and 2, and Low Country, exploring the Dutch coast. His work offers rich, accessible investigations into the ways cities remember, and forget, themselves. In collaboration with Team London Bridge and Mediculture Festival

LONDON'S LOST HOSPITALS
From Medieval Hospitals to Floating Fever Ships
At Guy's Hospital Chapel with Tom Bolton
on Thursday 14th May 2026 at 7 pm

London is a city of lost hospitals. Before the arrival of the NHS, more than 500 hospitals sought to aid the capital’s population, including a host of small, specialist and sometimes eccentric institutions. Most have now vanished, yet many still retain a shadowy presence in familiar neighbourhoods, from the oddly shaped site on the New Kent Road that once housed Britain’s first vegetarian hospital to the great void left by the National Temperance Hospital, demolished in 2017 for HS2.

As part of the city’s annual Medi-culture festival, join Dr Tom Bolton, who has written on London’s lost hospitals for the Wellcome Trust, on a journey through the hidden history of healthcare in the capital. Exploring abandoned Victorian institutions, peculiar medical buildings reassigned to new uses and sites erased almost entirely from the landscape, the talk uncovers the traces left behind by London’s vast medical past.

Many of these hospitals have left physical remnants, some have transformed into new forms of care giving, while others survive only in street patterns, archives and local memory. Together they reveal changing attitudes towards disease, medicine and the social history of the city itself.

Our venue for the evening will be the wonderful gothic chapel at Guy’s Hospital, which is celebrating the 300 year anniversary of its founding.

Tickets £12.50 including a Gothic Punch and 20% donation to the King's Chaplaincy Trust to support medical students. Please click here to purchase.

Tom Bolton
Tom Bolton is a writer and researcher whose books uncover the hidden geographies and histories of London and its margins. He is the author of Vanished City, London’s Lost Rivers Volumes 1 and 2, and Low Country, exploring the Dutch coast. His work offers rich, accessible investigations into the ways cities remember, and forget, themselves.

In collaboration with Team London Bridge and Mediculture Festival