Caterham Dene - a brief history
The Dene School
Originally founded in 1876 at ‘The Dean’, in Underwood Road, with twenty pupils being prepared for Eton or similar establishments.
In 1898 the Revd. R. Morgan Watkins became principal and at his instigation in 1905, the school was moved to the present location of the Dene Hospital in Church Road. He was assisted by two masters and Sergeant Major Clark from the Guards Depot who drilled the boys twice a week. H.W. Luce was the last headmaster with the school closing at the outbreak of war in 1939.
The Dene School
A Dene School Classroom, circa 1923
With the great influx of infantry into the Guards Depot during World War Two, the Dene then became a suitably sandbagged military hospital.
Post War
The hospital was taken over by the NHS in the late 1940s.
The hospital was mainly for geriatric patients until the closure of Caterham & District Hospital in Croydon Road during the late 1960s, when the two hospitals merged and became the Caterham Dene Hospital we know today.
