Preston Hall Sanatorium 2026

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In July 2026, following the Orwell Society’s visit to the places where George Orwell went hop-picking during his tramping days, our members Kevin and Sandra Carter visited the Preston Hall Sanatorium where Orwell spent several months beginning spring 1938 when his health broke down and his lungs began to leak blood.

The editor of Orwell’s Complete Works, Professor Peter Davison, puts events in this order:

Orwell had become progressively worse between 8 and 13 March and on the 13th (Sunday) it was decided ‘active steps’ must be taken. Then late on the 14th (after he had written to [Cyril] Connolly), he became very seriously ill and was taken from Wallington by ambulance to Preston Hall (whence the Case Record shows he was admitted) where the bleeding was stopped. It could well be that he was taken ill in the night of the 14th–15th …

Preston Hall Sanatorium, Aylesford, Kent, was a mile or two north of Maidstone. It was a British Legion hospital for ex-servicemen (hence the name of Orwell’s ward, after the World War I Admiral Jellicoe).

In late March Orwell wrote from his bed to his friend Jack Common:

I’m afraid I’ll have to be here about another two months. I don’t think there’s really much wrong with me, evidently I have an old lesion in one lung which has been there at any rate 10 years & was never discovered before because I am non-infectious, ie. no bacteria to show.

Whether the breakdown in Orwell’s health was due to the serious wound in the throat that he received in Spain cannot be known. He was in the sanatorium when Homage to Catalonia was published by Secker & Warburg on 25 April 1938; the book received good reviews but poor sales. It was only in the 1950s and later that it began to be appreciated (its first US edition was in 1952).

On the 27^th April Orwell wrote to Cyril Connolly: ‘I have been here about 5 or 6 weeks & I am afraid I shall have to be here about another 8 or 10.’ He was still in bed on the 22^nd May when he wrote a letter of thanks to Jack Common, having received his new book. The surviving letters of Eileen Blair, Orwell’s wife, who had saved his life by her quick response when his lung collapsed at home, show her managing his affairs and liaising with his literary agent. On the 30^th May she wrote:

… it’s not easy to work in a sanatorium, where people constantly walk about and impose a timetable that probably interferes with the work timetable, but the book seethes in his head and he is very anxious to get on with it. I ought to have written to you some time ago about this novel, when Eric first realised that he couldn’t finish it by October, but he then wanted Gollancz to be told that it would be ready anyway before Christmas. Now he thinks that it will be ready in the spring and this seems quite probable.

The novel in question would be Coming Up For Air, completed when the Blairs went to Marrakesh for the winter of 1938-1939. Orwell’s condition in Preston Hall makes it clear why he had to go to the dry heat of North Africa to regain his health.

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Kevin and Sandra Carter report:The whole of Preston Hall at Aylesford is now given over to the Royal British Veterans Enterprise (RBVE).

There is a garden of remembrance, but no museum or monument.  There are some references to its role as a TB hospital for servicemen returning from WW1 on their website. 

The only buildings that survive from Orwell’s time are Preston Hall itself, which is now divided up into private accommodation, and some of the farm buildings, where staff thought Orwell came to write.  It is next to the RBVE “Base Camp” cafe.

The first photograph shows the hall,

the second the surviving farm buildings,

and the third is of a former guest cottage (adjacent to the farm buildings).

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Our thanks to Kevin and Sandra Carter for the photographs and site report.

Kevin Carter is the author of George Orwell in Marrakech.