Bethlem Hospital was the largest of the philanthropic institutes that settled on St George's Field in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

It was a hospital for the mentally ill which was moved from its previous location in Moorfields in the City in 1815, and remained here until it moved to Beckenham in 1930.

The building and road layout were altered in the 1830s.

The institutions were attracted by the same factors as suburban developers and settlers: proximity to London, clean air and water, good new roads but at a distance from the squalor and vice of urban life.