Cheadle Royal Hospital

The hospital was founded at a time when only two other similar institutions existed in England (Bethlem and St Luke's)[2] and was initially located next to the Manchester Infirmary in 1763.[3] It was designed by Richard Lane in the Elizabethan style[1] and it opened as the Manchester Lunatic Hospital in 1766.[2] It had 24 beds when it opened, but had over 100 patients by 1800.[2]

The facility relocated to Cheadle, 10 miles (16 km) to the south, as the Manchester Royal Hospital for the Insane, in 1849.[2] Voluntary patients, known as boarders, were admitted from 1863.[2] The hospital expanded through the construction of villas on the Cheadle site in the 1860s and through the acquisition of houses in Colwyn Bay in the 1870s.[2] The site in Cheadle was initially 37 acres (15 ha); in the following 80 years about 220 acres (89 ha) were added and the original part of the site subsequently became formal gardens and sport and recreation grounds. A convalescent hospital at Glan-y-Don, Colwyn Bay, was also established.[4]

The facility became Cheadle Royal Hospital in 1902[2] and North House, with accommodation for 80 additional patients, was opened in 1903.[5] It had provision for the treatment of 400 patients in 1928[6] but it chose to remain private rather than joining the National Health Service in 1948.[2] The hospital was acquired by its management team in 1997 and then by Priory Group in 2010.[7]

Famous patients have included:

• Johnny Briggs, cricketer[8]
• Margot Bryant, actress[9]
• Arthur Ransome, children's writer and journalist[10]

• Listed buildings in Cheadle and Gatley
• Healthcare in Greater Manchester
• List of hospitals in England

• Nesta Roberts, Cheadle Royal Hospital: A bicentenary history (1967)

• The Priory Hospital Cheadle Royal