The Royal Earlswood was the first establishment to cater specifically for people with learning disabilities. Previously they had been housed either in asylums for the mentally ill or in workhouses.
Around 1847 Ann Serena Plumbe took an interest in the plight of the learning disabled, or "idiots" as they were unflinchingly termed at the time, and began to discuss what could be done to assist and educate them.
In 1848 a building was purchased and the first patients admitted. This building, Park House at Highgate, quickly proved to be small and a new building was commissioned. The building was entirely financed by public subscription and Queen Victoria subscribed 250 guineas in the name of Edward Prince of Wales, who became a life member. Prince Albert took a special interest from the beginning. He laid the foundation stone in June 1853 and opened the Asylum in June 1855. In 1862 Queen Victoria conferred a Royal Charter on the asylum.
John Langdon-Down (after whom Down syndrome was named) was medical superintendent of the hospital from 1855 to 1868. At this time patients slept in fifteen-bed dormitories and there was one member of staff to each seven patients. Tuberculosis accounted for the majority of deaths in the institution.
Patients were taught various manual trades such as carpentry, printing and brush-making, as well as domestic, garden and farm duties.
On 5 July 1958 the hospitable ceased to be a charitable trust and was absorbed into the National Health Service.
For several decades two of the Queen Mother's nieces, Katherine Bowes-Lyon and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon, were kept there without visits from the Royal Family and were declared dead by Buckingham Palace in an intentional fabrication.
The hospital closed in 1997 as part of the Government's long-term plan to transfer the care of people with learning disabilities into the community, and is now the site of the recent Royal Earlswood Park residential development.
Whilst you don't get a good view of the buildings from the cache site you can walk around the road a short distance for a great view along the avenue of trees.