This article was written by Robert Brown and first published in the Gazette on Thursday, July 28, 2005.

THE recent planning application in the Gazette to demolish the Park Prewett farm buildings has led to several enquiries about these historic structures.

The history of the land goes back as far as the 14th century when old records state that John Roke stole “conies in ye Park of Privette”. (Conies were rabbits.)

The land became a well-established tenant farm, with an assortment of animals and ploughland on which various crops were grown.

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Park Prewett in the 1960s with a field of crops nearby (Image: Contributed)

A three-storey farmhouse was built with an avenue leading to it. To complete the farm buildings were barns, pens and byres, which were erected around a central courtyard, while nearby were three cottages.

The Park Prewett land was part of The Vyne estate in the parish of Sherborne St John, the farm of 300 acres being purchased by Hampshire County Council from the Chute family in 1898 for the building of an asylum to relieve overcrowding at the Knowle Hospital, Fareham.

Constructing the huge complex of buildings began in 1913. But before it could be completed, the First World War of 1914-18 broke out and it was taken over as a military hospital in 1917.

It was finally opened as Park Prewett Mental Hospital in August 1921. The farmland was allowed to be kept to the south of the complex.

By then there were 11 staff on the farm and a manager, who was known as the farm bailiff.

The farm manager was kept busy attending several local markets in Hampshire and Berkshire, where he would buy or sell various livestock.

In the early 1920s, wages were paid fortnightly to farmworkers and varied between three and fourpence a day for a boy, and seven and sixpence (now 37.5p) a day for a shepherd.

The purpose of running the farm was to provide food and milk for the many staff and patients at the hospital.

Meanwhile, another aspect of the farm was the growth of herbs, flowers, greenhouse produce, vegetables, and fruit, all of which were the work of a head gardener and his staff.

During the Second World War, the “Dig for Victory” campaign was at full strength at Park Prewett farm, and the staff produced crops of all sorts to feed not only the hospital staff but villages as well.

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Park Prewett hospital in the 1960s (Image: Contributed)

When the war ended, the new government of Labour ministers, in 1945, brought among its pledges a pension scheme for farmworkers.

This meant that staff at Park Prewett farm could retire with a regular income, some of who were in their 70s, with a few in their 80s, as they could not afford to stop working.

Another change was the nationalisation of hospitals in 1948, which led to the hospital and farm being placed in the South West Metropolitan Region of the National Health Scheme.

It also meant that the Park Prewett head gardener found that he was in charge of the grounds at the Isolation Hospital in Kingsclere Road, Basingstoke, and at Wimble Hill Hospital, Crondall, 17 miles away.

A new management committee was formed and this brought about renewed working arrangements on the farm.

Buildings were renovated and more animals were added to the stock, including battery hens, cows, and pigs.

But a new government also produced new officials and the financial state of the many hospitals in the country led to a questionnaire as to whether it was worth keeping a farm at Park Prewett.

The result was the gradual closure of the farm. The animals were sold and the buildings were converted into industrial workshops.

The hospital farm was closed in 1965 and within five years all signs of a working farmyard were gone. The staff were dispersed to other places. 

When the hospital closed down in 1997, the patients and staff were transferred to a new building on the land called Parklands, but many more patients were released to live in the local community.

The outbuildings were left to be used for various purposes, while an old barn, by then listed as a building of historic interest, remained for future communal use.

The development of the Park Prewett land into housing has led to the central hospital buildings being left to be the centre of the community, with shops, a surgery and other facilities.