Royal United Hospital

The Royal United Hospital is a major acute-care hospital, located in the Weston suburb of Bath, England, which lies approximately west of the Bath city centre. The hospital currently has 565 beds and occupies a 52acre site. It is the area's major accident and emergency hospital, with a helicopter landing point on the adjacent Lansdown Cricket Club field. The hospital is operated by the Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust.HistoryThe Royal United Hospital takes its name from the union of the Bath Casualty Hospital founded in 1788 and the Bath City Dispensary and Infirmary founded in 1792. The Casualty Hospital was founded in response to the serious injuries sustained to labourers working on the buildings which were being constructed in the city. The Dispensary and Infirmary developed from the Bath Pauper Scheme, a charity founded in 1747 to provide medical treatment for destitute persons in Bath.The combined institution opened as the Bath United Hospital in 1826 in Beau Street in a building designed by John Pinch the elder. It was awarded the title Royal by Queen Victoria in 1864 when a new wing, named the Albert Wing after the recently deceased Prince Consort, opened. This building was later occupied by Bath Technical College.Combe Park siteThe hospital moved to its present site, Combe Park, on 11 December 1932. The site had previously been used for the large First World War Bath War Hospital which opened in 1916. In November 1919 it was renamed the Bath Ministry of Pensions Hospital, which it remained until it closed in 1929. The site was also used by the Forbes Fraser Hospital and the Bath and Wessex Orthopaedic Hospital, both founded in 1924 and merged into the RUH about 1980.