When the Rhondda first became the industrialised valley that we are all familiar with today health and sanitary conditions were, by today's standards appalling.

Life expectancy was low, infant mortality high and the cramped, unsanitary conditions meant that outbreaks of communicable diseases were common occurrences.

Thus in 1904, despite the existence in Ystrad of a 'fever hospital', the Medical Officer of Health of the Rhondda in his Annual Report stated the urgent need for a separate small-pox hospital.

Small-pox at that time being one of the most virulent, highly contagious diseases known. Subsequent to this report in 1906 the local council chose a site at Penrhys as the location for this new hospital, and the Rhondda Urban district Council's Health Committee purchased three acres of land from Penrhys-Isaf farm.

The site at Penrhys was chosen both for accessibility to both Rhondda Fach and Rhondda Fawr, straddling as it does the mountainside between the two.

Additionally its isolated position made it ideal for an isolation hospital, being at least four hundred yards from the nearest dwellings of Penrhys Uchaf and Penrhys Isaf farms.

The Medical Officer's Annual report gives the official estimate for the setting up of the hospital as being, 'including land, foundations, drainage, buildings, fittings, furniture, water supply, and boundary fence', approximately £35,000. The work on the hospital was completed towards the end of the following year.

The hospital served firstly the communities of the Rhondda and latterly all of South Wales for over sixty years. When the building was deemed surplus to requirements in the 1970's it had to be razed to the ground by the South Wales Fire service in 1971, to totally destroy any viruses still present on the site.