1878–1903 The Sarah Acland Home for Nurses was founded in memory of
Sarah Acland (wife of the
Oxford academic and physician Sir
Henry Acland) who died on 25 October 1878, as the Sarah Acland Home for Nurses. After Sarah Acland's death her friends decided that an institution for nurses would be an appropriate way to memorialize her, and they solicited donations and collected
£4,000 from members of the community. Work began quickly and a district nurse associated with the new institution was out working in the field a few weeks after the project began. In her 1893
autobiography Recollections of Life and Work, Louisa Twining noted that the facility provided "a most urgent need in the city". The 1984 book
The History of the University of Oxford lists the official foundation of the Acland Nursing Home as 1882, and describes it as a "leading institution" of Oxford, which had close ties to Oxford University. A new wing of the hospital was opened in October 1906 which contained
operating rooms and sterilization equipment, and the
Queen sent a congratulatory letter to the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, Dr. Osler. Sir Henry Acland retired from his
Regius Professorship at Oxford in 1894, and he apportioned a large percentage of a £3,000 testimonial to the Home for Nurses for expansion. Writing in
Sir Henry Wentworth Acland, Bart., K.C.B., F.R.S., Regius Professor of Medicine in the University of Oxford: A Memoir which was published after Sir Henry Acland's death, co-author James Beresford Atlay commented that Acland would have been pleased with the way the institution had flourished from 1879 to 1903: "Dr. Acland … had had daily evidence of the misery suffered by the rich and poor alike in the absence of trained nursing. The memorial to his wife could have assumed no form more acceptable to him." Writer
Mary Renault worked at the hospital in 1943. Poet
John Betjeman had a cyst removed at the Acland in August 1945. Author
C. S. Lewis entered the Acland on 15 July 1963 and suffered a
heart attack there;
J. R. R. Tolkien visited him there when he was convalescing. According to
The Victoria History of Oxford, the Acland Nursing Home was the "only hospital in Oxford which did not join the
National Health Service in 1948". The Acland Home was renamed as the Acland Hospital in 1964. In 2004,
The Sunday Times reported that the Acland Hospital had 36 beds, and consultants in 44 specialities. In 2004 the Banbury Road site was sold to
Keble College, who used the former hospital as graduate accommodation before demolishing it in 2016 (other than the Jackson building) to develop their
H B Allen Centre on the site as a new graduate campus. The hospital moved to
Headington on a site adjoining the
John Radcliffe Hospital, a suburb in east
Oxford, when it was renamed
The Manor Hospital. The Manor Hospital site was formerly the grounds of the
Oxford United Football Club (OUFC). The Manor Hospital has 71 rooms, an
intensive care unit with seven beds, six operating theatres, and
CT and
MRI scanners. ==Sale and re-development==