Until the twentieth century, Upper Penn was predominantly a farming community with several hundred acres of fields used for agriculture and pasture. Crops included wheat, oats, potatoes, peas, beans, and turnips. Livestock included horses, cows, sheep, and pigs.

Several families had farms in the area and worked on them for many generations. The land was rented from large landowners, mostly from The Duke of Sutherland. In the 17th century prominent farming families included the Bradneys, the Chamberlains, the Garbetts, the Johns, the Motts, the Muchalls, the Tonges, and the Whitmores. Many families had small holdings, either owning or renting a small piece of land.

The Beeches, originally a farmhouse

The house is an early example of one of the many gentlemen's residences that dominated the area. It was built around 1770 as the farmhouse of Upper Penn Farm, later known as Beeches Farm, and occupied by the Lanns family. It is thought to have been named after the copper beech trees that were a feature of the garden. During the later part of the 19th century the house was owned and occupied by Martha Warner, her two unmarried daughters, Elizabeth and Sophia; also Rebecca Simmons a cook and domestic servant, Mary Carter a housemaid, and Alfred Penzer, a footman and domestic servant. The Warner family were property owners who derived their income from rents.

The Beeches. From an old postcard.

The house was later acquired by Francis J. J. Gibbons of James Gibbons Limited, St. John’s Works, Church Lane, Wolverhampton. The firm made locks, all kinds of builders' ironmongery including doorplates, knobs, handles, geared fanlight openers, panic doors, door springs and also ‘Cunard’ cycles.

On July 25th, 1923 he sold the house to sheepskin rug manufacturer Henry Evers Palfrey for £3,650 and moved to Penn Hall. In the early 1930s the house was sold to the Board of the Royal Hospital who purchased the house and adjoining land. They adapted it for use as a convalescent home for women, to replace the existing St. Catherine’s Convalescent Home, at The Butts, Penn.

In the Second World War extra beds were desperately needed for wounded soldiers at the Royal Hospital and so The Beeches was converted to a children’s hospital with 30 beds.

Francis J. J. Gibbons.

After the war, children treated at the Royal Hospital were sent to The Beeches to recuperate when their condition improved. Girls who were too young to enrol as trainee nurses, lived in the top of the house, and carried out basic treatments as an introduction to nursing. There were also gardeners who maintained the grounds, and ran the kitchen garden and greenhouses to provide fresh produce for the hospital.

Hundreds of local children suffering from illnesses such as polio and tuberculosis were looked after in the house, but by the late 1980s it had fallen into a bad state of repair, and closed in 1989.

In 2000 plans were made for the refurbishment of the house, and an extension of the site. The new hospital officially opened on 17th May, 2004 under the name of The Beeches Training and Education Centre.