Queen Alexandra Hospital 5.56

The Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham, Portsmouth, is the only hospital serving the city of Portsmouth and the surrounding area. There are several small treatment outstations which have been opened to relieve the overload at the QA Hospital. It is publicly owned and is administered by the Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust and has a Ministry of Defence Hospital Unit attached.HistoryOriginally a military hospital, The Queen Alexandra (named for Alexandra of Denmark, King Edward VII's consort) was built in 1904–1908 to replace an earlier hospital which stood in Lion Street in Portsea, Portsmouth. The original buildings were of red brick construction, and the site was in a largely rural area, linked to Portsmouth and the surrounding villages (now suburbs) by a tram service.The demilitarisation of the hospital began in 1926 when it was handed to the Ministry of Pensions, to care for disabled ex-servicemen. The Second World War saw the first civilian patients admitted, and several temporary huts added to the site to increase capacity. As with many makeshift hospitals from the era, the huts stayed in place for several years after the war.Following the creation of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, all but 100 of the 640 beds were transferred to the NHS in 1951, with the remainder reserved for ex-servicemen. A League of Friends was established one year later. Development of the hospital under the NHS was rapid, and a Cerebral Palsy Unit was built in 1955, with two classrooms, a physiotherapy room, a speech and language therapy room, a staff room, and a kitchen. The unit opened in 1956. This was followed in 1957 by an outpatients unit, and in 1958 by the hospital chapel.