The hospital was designed by
George Thomas Hine using a Compact Arrow layout and construction began in 1893. It was opened as the Sunderland Borough Asylum in 1895. A villa block was added in 1902. Further development took place in the 1930s when an admissions hospital and convalescent villas were built. The asylum joined the
National Health Service as Cherry Knowle Hospital in 1948. After the introduction of
Care in the Community in the early 1980s, the hospital went into a period of decline and closed in 1998. and the site is being redeveloped for residential use. The Hopewood Park mental health campus opened on the site in 2014. ==References==