By 1911 part of the site had become the Darenth Industrial Trading Colony, and the institution was becoming almost self-sufficient in food production and the manufacture of everyday items, thanks to its ample supply of free labour.

By 1970 the population had grown to 1,500 and the physical conditions in this grim and vast Victorian building were increasingly unacceptable by modern standards.

Finally in 1973 the Regional Health Board agreed to close Darenth, but the funding and planning required for such a major undertaking took years to put in place.

[2] Darenth Park was the first large regional learning disability institution to close in England as a result of the British government's emerging Care in the Community policy.

Audrey Emerton, the South East Thames Regional Chief nursing officer between 1979 and 1990, guided the replacement programme,[3] and from the early 1980s on nearly a thousand residents were resettled to other hospitals, hostels, small group homes and local facilities.