Harefield Hospital Centenary

Marking 100 years of Harefield hospital

Harefield Hospital was established in 1915 in Harefield Park, an estate owned by the Billiard-Leake family. They offered it as a hospital to the Ministry of Defence of New South Wales to treat soldiers from Australia and New Zealand who had been injured at Gallipoli and on the Western Front.

The wounded soldiers who died while at Harefield are buried in the nearby Anzac cemetery in St Mary’s Church. They are remembered in a service held each year on Anzac Day (25 April).

After the First World War, the estate was sold to the local council and it was developed as an isolation hospital for patients with tuberculosis; this laid the foundations for the future of Harefield Hospital as a world-renowned centre for the treatment of lung and respiratory conditions.

After becoming part of the NHS in 1948, Harefield developed first as a general hospital and later as a specialist heart and lung centre. Groundbreaking work led by Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub in the latter part of the 20th century included the first heart transplant at Harefield Hospital in 1980 followed by the world’s first combined heart and lung transplant in 1983. This led to Harefield Hospital having the largest transplant programme of its kind anywhere in the world.

In 1998, Harefield Hospital merged with Royal Brompton Hospital, Chelsea, to form Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust and become one of the UK’s leading specialist trusts.