Notes: 1. The Elswick and Scotswood Workmen’s War Relief Fund provided equipment for the hospital. £2,000 was given from surplus Red Cross funds, and they also supplied an ambulance. Viscount Allendale gave £250.
2. The Hexham Courant Supplement Sat. 21/10/1921 reads as follows:
Royal Visit to Hexham. Prince Henry opens War Hospital and Unveils Memorial.
Loyal and enthusiastic Reception of King’s Son.
A Memorable Day.
His Royal Highness Prince Henry, the third son of Their Majesties the King and Queen, undertook his first official ceremonial when he visited Hexham on Thursday last to open the War Memorial Hospital and unveil the War Memorial Cross in the Abbey Grounds”.
He was met by Mr. James Robb, J.P., the Chairman of the Hospital Committee and of the Hexham War Memorial Committee, at the hospital gates.
The total of the men who died is 221; they were mostly resident in the town and the country closely surrounding it. (Some are from the local Territorial Battalion, 4th Northumberland Fusiliers.)
At a town meeting of February 1919 the Committee secured the fine house and surrounding grounds for the establishment of a cottage hospital in Hexham. When opened it had a male ward with 6 beds, a female ward with 6 beds, a ward with 4 childrens’ cots, an operating theatre and an X-Rays room. The County Council Clinic was in a suite of rooms on the floor below, with an entrance from Eastgate. A baby born on that September 29th was named Henrietta after Prince Henry.
3. St. Wilfrid’s War Memorial Hospital.
1921 Purchased and equipped by Hexham War Memorial Committee, it opened on 29th September 1921. After that it was probably handed over to a trust to run it; it had a separate endowment to fund it.
1948. It was taken over under the National Health Act, with all the other properties which had been used for health purposes.
1974 It was taken into the Local Health Authority. Some money was paid by the Government into an independent Trust Fund by way of compensation. Northumberland had some £500,000 invested in a fund and paid out money arising from the income.
Hexham had a variation of the Order for the original endowment from the Charity Commissioners to use the money from the Trust Fund to make improvements to health services in Hexham, such as installing the hydrotherapy pool in the General Hospital.
The St. Wilfrid’s Hospital building was probably owned by the R.V.I. and Associated Hospitals Trust and when it was sold they would have to sell it for a realistic price, on a valuation set by the District Valuer. A similar instance was the Charlotte Straker Hospital, Corbridge which was sold for a favourable price because of its intended use, rather than by auction or to the highest tender. Geoffrey Whitehouse, sometime Chairman of the Local Health Authority, 23rd Jan. 1995
5. The house had been owned by Jaspar Gibson Family. In 2001 a stone was unveiled on the site of the old hospital, now a housing estate called “Gibsons Fields”.
The stone reads:
Hexham War Memorial Hospital 1923-1998 previously stood on this site, purchased by public subscription to honour the Fallen of the Great War 1914-1918
6. The hospital was opened for patients as soon as it was ready in July 1921. The official opening would come later with the dedication of the cross.
7. “At a meeting of the committee of the Hexham War Memorial Cottage Hospital, Mr. James T. Robb presiding, Miss S.A. Barber, of Leeds, out of 62 applicants, was unanimously appointed matron. She comes with very high credentials. The hospital will shortly be opened, and will be a great boon to the neighbourhood.”
