With disputes about funding for North Devon District Hospital in the news, and a proposal to create a community health and wellbeing hub at Bideford Hospital, it is interesting to remember that hospital provision in the past was not free of controversy. 

Volunteers from Bideford Community Archive write that Bideford Isolation Hospital was first established in 1885 on Alverdiscott Road where Kingsley House now stands, consisting of six beds. That year, an inspector from the Local Government Board visited the location and said that it ‘seemed to be an excellent place as far as it went, and the situation was good.’ In February 1893, Dr William Ackland, in his role as Medical Officer of Health, reported that The Infectious Diseases Act was “working most satisfactorily. The Borough had no mortuary; but it had an Isolation Hospital, which had not been opened during the year.”

Fast forward to April 1920, when Bideford Council agreed to sell the Hospital to the Bideford and Northam Joint Hospital Committee for £650. Terms offered included payment over three years at 6% interest. In 1928, a recommendation was made by Devon Public Health Committee that the hospital be enlarged with fourteen additional beds. However, there appeared to be general opposition from Bideford residents scared of contagion. In 1932, a further recommendation suggested an increase to thirty-six beds, but this was then reduced to thirty. The North Devon Joint Isolation Hospital (also known as Kingsley Unit/Hospital (and sometimes as the Fever Hospital by local people), opened on 19 June 1934, incorporating the site of the Isolation Hospital. 

During World War II, in 1941, the Bideford District Joint Hospital Board stated that the area they were responsible for was so large that an auxiliary isolation hospital to take minor infectious cases would need two hundred beds. The next year,1942, the Hospital stated that it was prepared to accept patients suffering from louse-borne typhus fever. Salaries for all nursing staff increased in 1943, adding £250 to the annual salary bill, and in July 1945, there were twelve cases in the hospital: seven scarlet fever, two para-typhoid, one typhoid, one cerebral-spinal meningitis and one diphtheria.  

In 1962 it was reported that a number of small hospitals, including Kingsley, would close but not until 1975. On its demise, the hospital was occupied by Broomhayes (originally sited in Westward Ho!), a National Autistic Society unit, and the property is now known as Kingsley House providing residential and day services for autistic adults.