The Kent and Sussex Hospital was built on the site of a mansion called Great Culverden House, designed by Decimus Burton

Designed by Cecil Burns, a local architect, the hospital was completed and opened in 1934. The foundation stone had been laid in 1932 by the contemporary Duchess of York, later to become Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

The original building was surrounded by lawns on three sides, but the hospital has expanded upwards and outwards several times over the decades. This included the installation of six wartime emergency huts shortly after the hospital's completion; four of these huts were still in use as wards up until the hospital closed, on 21 September 2011.