 The painter Stanley Spencer, who lived in nearby Cookham, died in the hospital in 1959 from cancer, having undergone an unsuccessful operation there the year before.Dr Barbara Ansell, the founder of paediatric rheumatology, worked at the hospital from the 1960s through to the 1980s.The hospital closed and was abandoned in 1985 and lay derelict for two decades while the National Trust, who owned the site since 1942, explored options for its development.