The retailer has taken control of the former maternity and psychriatric hospital through a deal with the North East London NHS Foundation Trust, reports Marco Marcelline
Aldi has reportedly purchased the former Thorpe Coombe Hospital site in Forest Road, Walthamstow from the North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NEFLT).
According to property filings seen by City AM, the food retailer has signed a mortgage agreement to take over the former hospital, which has sat empty since 2017.
Aldi’s plans for the site are not yet public, and no planning application has been submitted to the council yet.
CityAM reports that Aldi plans to build a supermarket in and around the 80-space car park to the ex-hospital’s rear, while keeping the main building in Forest Road intact.
Aldi often buys freehold sites, including brownfield land and town-centre plots, before partnering with developers to include residential units alongside new stores.
In 2020, Aldi received approval for a scheme in Old Kent Road, Southwark involving 170 new homes across two towers (14 and 21 storeys) on a 1.1-acre freehold site that also includes a new flagship Aldi store.
The Echo has asked Aldi whether it intends to retain, convert or demolish any of the remaining structures as part of its redevelopment plans.
The reported transaction follows a long period of stalled and only partial redevelopment of the site. Planning permission for 91 homes – approved in 2016 with 0% affordable housing – did not come into fruition, with NELFT instead completing only a new health and wellbeing facility, the Jane Atkinson Centre in 2019, before putting the remainder of the site up for sale.
A 2020 sales brochure prepared by Montagu Evans for NELFT described the site as “a fantastic residential development opportunity”.
The brochure made clear that the trust intended to dispose of the land “freehold with vacant possession”, and bids were invited by October 2020.
Waltham Forest Council’s Local Plan Part 2, released in 2024, designates the hospital as a future site for 100 new homes, with workspace, community or cultural uses, with an added requirement for developers to “preserve or enhance the significance, setting and key views” of the Grade-II listed building.
The Local Plan also calls for improved east–west pedestrian and cycling links and “enhanced greening and biodiversity”.
Thorpe Coombe Hospital’s history stretches back more than 200 years.
Built in the early 19th century as a private mansion for Octavius Wigram, a former governor of British insurer the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation, in 1934 it became a maternity hospital before subsequently being used as a nurses’ home from 1973. It eventually became a mental health facility until it was shut in 2017.
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