A committee of nine JPs were appointed at the Easter Quarter Sessions in 1846 to superintend the erecting or providing of a lunatic asylum for Hampshire.

[2] For about a year, in 1857/58, one of the gardeners at Knowle, Henry Coe, corresponded with Charles Darwin on horticultural matters, especially the cultivation of kidney beans.

As a result of this correspondence, Darwin became involved in a minor dispute about the legality of a patient's detention at Knowle.

[6] In the late 1960s, Dr Ronald A. Sandison, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist who pioneered the clinical use of LSD in psychiatry, worked at Knowle Hospital.

[8] Part of the hospital site was home to the Hampshire Ambulance Service Knowle Training School in the 1980s.