St Thomas' Home for the Friendless and Fallen, Basingstoke

In 2019 St Thomas’ Care Home in Darlington Road, Basingstoke was a dementia care home. St Thomas' has an interesting history as a centre for caring for the less fortunate of the county. In January 1863 the Bishop of Winchester gave his approval to Admiral Ryder’s idea to establish a home for women whose lives were ruined by prostitution or abuse by providing them with work as laundresses.

The 1930 OS map calls St Thomas’ the Mount Tabor Certified Institution which was a different kind of home, sheltering people under the terms of the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. In 1951 St Thomas’ got its old name back as the School for the Deaf which occupied the site until it was closed in the mid-1980s. After that the premises were used as a night-shelter for the homeless but suffered some vandalism and fires.

The complex was threatened with demolition for re-development in 1989 but local residents fought to save it and achieved statutory Grade II* listing for the chapel built in 1884 and also saved the residential block.

For a full history and timeline of St Thomas’ see the links below.