Historical Buildings in Surrey

St Columba’s House on Maybury Hill, in Woking, was established in the late Victorian Period, as one of the branch houses of the Anglican Sisterhood of St Peter, a religious community devoted to nursing.  Originally a long-term care home for incurables, it became a Convent in 1944 when the Sisters were evacuated from their home at Kilburn, following bomb damage during the Second World War.  
    
By the 1980s, with convalescent homes gradually being phased out under the National Health Service and numbers entering the Sisterhood significantly decreasing, part of the site on Maybury Hill was sold to raise funds for a smaller, purpose-built Convent and the remaining buildings handed over to charitable trusts. The Sisters now live in dispersed housing in a variety of locations but Saint Columba’s House (SCH) is their enduring legacy, a Retreat and Conference Centre for the 21^st Century.