Royal South Hants Hospital in St Marys, Southampton

It was founded in 1835 as the Royal South Hampshire Infirmary and is one of the oldest hospitals in the city.

Some joke the hospital is so old, it remembers when doctors used leeches instead of antibiotics to treat illnesses.

This was never really the case.

The hospital's first premises were in St Mary Street, but moved to its current site in Fanshawe Street in 1844. The new hospital was designed by Thomas Sandon Hack, and could accommodate 40 in-patients.

Further wings were added in 1851 and 1857, and St Paul’s Chapel, built in 1857 at the eastern end, completed the hospital’s frontage to Fanshawe Street.

In 1866, following a fundraising campaign by local Masonic lodges, further hospital buildings were constructed.

This was part of the national campaign to endow the country with a network of Royal Voluntary hospitals, such as Winchester’s Royal Hants County.

The Eyre Crabbe Wing was completed in 1868, named after a famous soldier and veteran of the Peninsular War who later lived in Highfield.

The hospital was renamed the Royal South Hants Hospital in 1868, and it received a royal charter in 1871. In the following years, the hospital expanded significantly, with new wards and facilities being added.

In 1896, another new wing with two wards and operating theatres was built. It was officially opened by Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter Beatrice, later Princess Henry of Battenburg, on February 7, 1900, and named Victoria Jubilee Wing.

By 1933 the hospital had 275 beds.

The hospital joined the National Health Service in 1948, and continued to grow and develop in the following decades.

In 1979, as part of the closure of the Knowle hospital near Fareham - originally the South Hampshire Asylum - a new Department of Psychiatry opened to treat adult mental health patients.

The Department of Psychiatry closed in 2009.

An Adult Mental Health Unit, Antelope House, with 50 beds and 12 intensive care beds, was built nearby.

After nearly 150 years of sovereignty, the RSH became part of the General Hospital Management Unit in 1991, later becoming Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust.

The chapel fell out of use in 1992 and remains today as the only link with the original Fanshawe Street hospital which was demolished in the early 2000s.

Today, the Royal South Hants Hospital is a modern and well-equipped hospital that provides a range of services to the local community. It has a capacity of 332 beds, and employs more than 1,000 staff.