It satisfied the requirements set down by the Commissioners in Lunacy: a site on elevated ground with cheerful prospects and enough space to provide employment and recreation for inmates while preventing them being overlooked or disturbed by strangers.

[4] Although the initial building programme was not completed until 1876, the first patients, all of them pauper lunatics from the Kent County Asylum at Barming Heath, had been able to move in the previous year.

[3] The hospital became a self-contained village, with its own farm, workshops, baker, butcher, fire-brigade, church, graveyard, gasworks, cricket team, band, etc.

The hospital achieved a brief moment of fame in 1969 when a nurse, Barbara Bishop, was awarded an MBE after a daring rooftop rescue of a suicidal patient.

[6] In 1972, when the hospital was under the leadership of medical superintendent John Ainslie, a post-doctorate researcher in chemistry called Brian Ankers (from the nearby University of Kent) obtained a temporary job as a nursing assistant.

Ankers became concerned about the ill treatment of patients on the long-stay wards and, together with nurse Olleste Weston, took the matter up with the hospital authorities.

[8] The inquiry, chaired by J. Hampden Inskip, upheld the majority of the complaints and was critical of senior doctors, nurses, and administrators, but stopped short of advising disciplinary action against any staff.