Bank forced to step in after developers defaulted on their loan

Work has begun on the site of the former Chiswick Lodge Hospital six years after the campaign to save the historic building failed.

The hospital on Chiswick Mall was originally endowed by Chiswick Polish owner Dan Mason and became the birth place of singer Kim Wilde and Pete Townshend of the Who. Sir Roger Bannister worked as a Doctor there.

The land was sold and the building demolished but lay untouched for years until Barclays Bank was forced to made an unprecedented to move into housebuilding after the developer defaulted on the loan.

Barclays decided to invest in the building of 11 new homes on the site which overlooks the Thames rather than selling it because they say the latter option would have lost up to half the value of loan.

When Hounslow Primary Care Trust sold the site it was no longer a maternity hospital but a centre caring for elderly patients with Alzheimer's. It also took in those with motor neurone disease both young and old.

March 22, 2011