Malvern Convalescent home

[Wildlady]

I have done copy typing of the newspaper as I couldn't get the newspaper in this rootschat.

MALVERN MEMORIES - 7th September 2007 (Malvern Gazette & Ledbury Reporter)

It is 60 years since Wendy Grounds, of Pickersleigh Road, started her traning as a paediatric nurse, and this week she recalls her days at St Cuthbert's Hospital, an annexe of the Birmingham Children's Hospital which stood on Worcester Road on the site now occupied by Morgan Court.  Next dor is Baxhill Nursery, formerly the hospial's training school, which remains very much as it was then.

HAPPY MEMORIES OF HOSPITAL DAYS

My colleagues and I were 18 years old in that hot August of 1947.
We arrived in summer dresses, soon replaced by white uniforms with black shoes and stockings, ropped offwith starched caps.
During the preliminary training we learned how to give bed baths, enemas, injections and sit patients on bed pans - all with the help of a floppy,worn dummy.  We bandaged each other into spirals, reverse spiralsand figures of eight and learned how to copewith anyone haemorrhaging to death.  We were fully-fledged probationary nurses.
The young patients were suffering from tuberculosis, arthritis, burns that needed skin grafts and so on.  They stayed at St Cuthbert's for months at a time and when well enough went to the hospital school next door.
For the night nurse it was a  long lonely vigil as the wind whistled through the windows of the open-air ward where children with weak chests slept.
It was unnerving when curious strangers prowled around and peered through the shutters, but even more unnerving when one night one actually got in.
On the night a little boy from the open-air ward climbed out of his cot and sat on my knee. I put him back to bed and tucked him in but within minutes he was out again demanding to be cuddled.
"What the matter with you tonight?" I enquired, non-plussed by his behaviour.  "I'm frickened" he admitted. "Why are you afraid?" I asked, "Cos there's a man under my bed and I want him to go away".  I had to do something.
I placed the child on my chair, wrapped him in my cloak and walked into the open-air ward. I looked straight under the cot and sure enough a soldier was crouched there.  "Out" I commanded.
He struggled from under the cot, jumped through the open window and headed off up the Worcester Road.
What had he got in mind? Perhaps he had just come in out of the cold.
We often talk about our hospital days and think foudly of St Cuthbert's and the children there.
Many of them were only a few years younger than us but we wonder if they remember their days playing in the garden with a young nurses and splashing in the pool.
I hope they grew up to overcome the problems of their early years and look back with pleasant memories of their spell at Malvern.

 copy-typed by wildlady (Valerie)

[Wildlady]

Hi Ray, sorry for delay,  I let you know that I have found a newspaper of Malvern about St. Cuthbert's Hospital which I had from Worcester Record Office last year. SO you can read about Happy Memories of Hospital days that I have typing out on this roots chat.

Wildlady (Valerie)

[kingpettey]

Wildlady (Valerie),

Thank for your efforts, much appreciated. The warmth and love I received is still felt today, some 55 plus years  on. 

netti, thank you for Kelly’s look up.

Forgive my aging brain that this weekend suffered the pleasures of a grandsons 18th (boy do I feel old), but I‘m confused.

Is 171 Worcester Rd St Cuthbert’s?
Is 141 Worcester Rd Summerfield’s?
   
Thanks again

Ray

[netti]

Yes, you understood correctly Ray. It appears the Birmingham Hospital Saturday Fund had several convalescent  homes including the ones in Malvern. They first opened St Anns Orchard, also Worcester Rd, for women. Followed by The Hugh Sumner Home - funded with a generous gift from Hugh Sumner - for children. St Cuthberts was an annex to it - although about 300 yards further down the road.

You can google for more info.

The children's home was sold in around 1965 and went on to become Summerfield School for the Deaf. It was not called Summerfield when it was part of Birmingham Hospital.

St Cuthberts was demolished and has a sheltered housing complex on it now. A few doors down, Malvern is finally getting a new hospital, 25 years after the land was purchased to build it upon 

netti

[kingpettey]

netti,

Thank you, that's a  great help.

Good luck with the new hospital

Ray

[wmmsk00]

I attended st Cuthbert's around 1964, i have a picture from the Malvern Gazette dated February 28th. 1964 siting on my bed the sister in charge was sister Archibald, my memory be it vague was a large building with a conservatory on the side which housed beds, past this opened into the rear walled garden with very tall trees at the bottom, to the front was also a wall with a large tree, I remember my dad visiting on a Sunday and Wednesday.
I'm not sure if it's correct but the name nurse Bins rings a bell!!

[wmmsk00]

St Cuthberts began life as a boys' school in 1904 - the school closed in the 1940's.

this is exactly as I remember, I have a photo of me in a wheel chair taken outside the front entrance.

[Glenn47]

Hi everyone,

This forum about St Cuthberts brings back a lot of bad memory's for me as I was there as a small boy of 5 years old with TB in 1952 and I stayed for 10 months. I would have been there at the same time as you Raymond, small world. My father had TB at the same time so he could not come to see me but my mother came once a month from Birmingham not very often you might say but she told me later that money was very short. I remember every time she left me I thought she would not come back and I used to try to climb up onto the stone wall that was facing the Worcester road, and try to see her leaving but I was far to small and I would stand there crying my eyes out. I remember one day the big lads tied me to a tree and left me there for what seemed like ages.

One day I was told off by one of the nurses for throwing my hard boiled egg out of the bed, I must have wanted it runny ha ha. I also remember my mother bringing me a large tin frog with a green felt cloth on it and I only had it a few days and managed to peel it all off. You can see by now i was not a happy bunny.

I remembered one night all these fireworks going off must have been Nov 5th. Even at 5 years old I can remember how lovely the grounds of the hospital where with the tall trees everywhere and the lovely hills close by. In the summer I have a feeling they used to push the beds outside at night under the stars with a rubber blanket on top, maybe just the TB patients.

I lost my mother in August 2009 at the good old age of 87 but before she was ill in Nov 2008. My mother and my wife and me went back and found where the Hospital used to be, now posh flats. What lovely surroundings with the Links on one side hills on the other. I remembered the Hills straight away as that is what we looked onto from our beds.

I did get over my TB with care and attention and fresh Malvern Air, I 'm now nearly 64 now, hope my Wife will still feed me at 64 ha ha, and living in Shropshire.

That's all for now sorry my story's a bit sad but that's what it was like for me at 5 years old.

 All the very best Glenn.

[netti]

great to hear your memories Glenn - and that you don't hold a grudge against Malvern! Can't imagine being sent away at just 5, no wonder you were upset.

netti