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This street, laid out in 2014, is on the site of the former Atkinson Morley Hospital. The hospital was opened in 1869 following a bequest to St George’s Hospital by wealthy hotelier and landowner Atkinson Morley (1781 – July 14, 1858), a former medical student at St George’s Hospital, Hyde Park Corner. Morley’s donation of £100,000 “for receiving, maintaining, and generally assisting convalescent poor patients” was used to purchase 28 acres of land from the second Duke of Wellington’s former estate in Wimbledon. The hospital remained a convalescent home until 1939. During World War II, when the Bolingbroke and St George’s Hospitals acted as emergency hospitals for war casualties, the Neurosurgery Unit was established at Atkinson Morley Hospital by the neurosurgeon Sir Wylie McKissock. As the regional neurosciences unit for south west London, the hospital even had its own helicopter landing facility. In the 1960s The Wolfson Neurorehabilitation Centre was built next door to Atkinson Morley Hospital. The Morley closed in 2003 and the Wolfson continued until 2012, when services moved into new homes at the nearby Queen Mary’s and St George’s Hospitals. As for Morley (1781 – July 14, 1858) he owned the British Hotel at 25 Cockspur Street, but sold it to buy the Burlington Hotel at 19-20 Cork Street, before in 1831-31 building Morley’s Hotel at 1-3 Trafalgar Square.
