St Martin’s Mental Hospital was assigned as a subsidiary Emergency Hospital ahead of the onset of the Second World War. It was in operation by mid September. There was briefly an air-raid siren here at the start of the war. A decontamination laundry was established in the hospital laundry in May 1941. A civil-defence rest centre had been established at the hospital by about the middle of 1941, and an Emergency Feeding Centre in mid to late 1942.