Queen Alexandra's Military Hospital

1905 - 1977

The Queen Alexandra’s Military Hospital Millbank (QAMH), sited next to the Tate Gallery, opened in July 1905. It was one of the last hospitals to be built on the Nightingale pavilion pattern (wards of 12 beds off a central corridor, improved ventilation etc). The site contained hospital wards, a chapel and a cemetary.

The first patients admitted were veterans of the Boer war. During WWI it became a general hospital for the Army treating the war wounded, shellshock, gas gangrene, trench-fever and frostbite. After the war the Hospital was enlarged to 200 beds and, together with the Royal Army Medical College, became the postgraduate school for medical officers of the Royal Army Medical Corps. It was the only institution that taught military surgery.

It closed in the 1970s and some staff transferred to Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital (QEMH) in Woolwich. It became a training facility for Laboratory Technicians and Doctors for the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC).

It finally closed in 2005 and training moved to Portsmouth.

[Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, was associated with many charitable causes including the veterans of Britain's many foreign wars. In 1902, during the Boer War, the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, later renamed Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps, was founded.]

In September 1940, a bomb fell close to the hospital on Bulinga (now Bulinca) Street. It made a large crater in the street and damaged the hospital as well as the Tate Gallery. The blast carved out a large crater in Bulinga Street and caused serious damage to one section of the hospital.