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Notes: History
December 1999 was the 70th anniversary of the establishment of a hospital on the Newtown site now occupied by Wakefield Hospital. It also marked the first 10 years in the existence of Wakefield. Lewisham Hospital opened in 1929 on the existing site – then an abandoned brickworks. It was built by Fletcher Construction on land leased from local Maori. The then Prime Minister, Sir Joseph Ward, and Governor-General, Sir Charles Fergusson, opened the hospital.
Lewisham was owned and operated by a Catholic order of nursing sisters, The Little Company of Mary. The order was founded in 1877 by Mother Mary Potter and had hospitals in England, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. At the time Lewisham Hospital was being built at Newtown there were also Lewisham Hospitals in Sydney and Christchurch, from which the nurses for the new Lewisham Hospital in Newtown came.
The name of the hospital was changed to Calvary Hospital in 1953. Mary Potter Hospice operated at Calvary until 1990.
In 1987 Wellcare Corporation purchased the hospital and renamed it Wellcare Hospital. Wellcare Corporation became a casualty of the 1987 stock market ‘crash’ and in 1989 a consortium of investors featuring a high proportion of local medical specialists purchased the hospital. It was renamed Wakefield Hospital.
The original 1929 building is the core of the existing building, extending eastwards from the main entrance. Its featured open verandahs on all floors quickly fell victim to Wellington’s prevailing northerlies and were glassed in 1932. A west wing was added in response to the demand for services at the Hospital, and the Williamson family later donated funds for eastwards extension of the original building to provide more rooms and to house a radiotherapy unit.
 OpenStreetMap Address : Latitude: -41.31678715855359, Longitude: 174.77923035621643
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