Old soldiers' home in the ranks before receiving a commission. The site for the Royal Hospital was an area of Chelsea which held an incomplete building "Chelsey College", a theological college James I founded in 1609. The Royal Hospital opened its doors to the Chelsea Pensioners in 1692 for "the relief and succour" of veterans. Some of the first soldiers admitted included those injured at the Battle of Sedgemoor. The hospital maintains a 'military-based culture which puts a premium on comradeship'. The in-pensioners are formed into three companies, each headed by a Captain of Invalids (an ex-Army officer responsible for the 'day to
Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability when it became the Royal Hospital and Home, Putney, and again, in 1995, to the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability - a name that better reflected its work. In 1985, the RHN opened the UK’s first dedicated Brain Injury Unit, and in 1987, it launched the Vegetative State Unit, the only one of its kind in the UK. The country’s first Transitional Rehabilitation Unit - a unit that helps people with acquired brain injuries rehabilitate to the extent that they have regained enough independence to return to life living in the community - was opened at the RHN in 1993. A