Kerryanne Clancy
Looks back 15 years in The Sentinel’s files and revisits a landmark hospital which was the birthplace of thousands of Staffordshire children
MANY a bouncing baby began life at Groundslow in Tittensor.
Once a 117-bed maternity hospital, the Winghouse Lane site shut its doors in 1983 following the opening of the new district general hospital in Stafford.
A Sentinel headline in August that year declared that the complex had been sold for an undisclosed sum.
And brushing the dust off Sentinel cuttings dating back to 1936 reveals that Groundslow had been a sanatorium for more than 70 female patients with tuberculosis, following reports of a high death rate among women between the ages of 15 and 25.
Yet before this it had a very different life. Before 1913, when the Staffordshire, Wolverhampton and Dudley Joint Committee for Tuberculosis purchased Groundslow, a house was built in 1832 as a hunting lodge for the Duke of Sutherland when he lived at Trentham Park.
As it turned out, Groundslow was to have many more lives over the years.
Following the closure of the hospital, the site was divided. By October 1983, The Sentinel reported that major development plans were on the drawing board, including a hotel, private nursing home and a computer centre. At this stage it was proposed that the old nurses’ home would be the nursing home, the main building would be a hotel and the wards at the back of the site would be a computer company headquarters.
Camelot Court nursing home later opened in the administrative block of the former hospital in September 1985, while Groundslow Grange care home opened in October 1984 in the former nurses’ accommodation, which had been built in 1949. It was run by Peter Ratchford and former Benny Hill girl Anne Bruzac.
The residential care home closed in 1997, and by 2002 the adjacent former hospital was redeveloped into detached homes and terraces, while the Duke’s former home was converted into 25 flats.
But Anne and Peter remain on site in one of the few remaining parts, which are testament to the former life of this once grand estate.
Anne says: “I have done some homework into the site as I’m fascinated with history and old buildings. Groundslow is a hamlet and used to be an Elizabethan village so it’s steeped in history.
“The surroundings are really beautiful here with lots of old trees. They are identical to those found at Trentham Gardens, because the Duke of Sutherland also owned that, so planted the same trees on both sites.
“The houses on the old site came after it was bulldozed in 2000, though the lodge which we live in was built in 1832. When they started building work they found a medieval wall deep underground, so then it became an archaeological site.”
Anne and Peter remain owners of the nurses’ accommodation building, and having initially thought about turning it into a hotel, last year they got permission to turn it into executive apartments.
But she says: “We won’t demolish the nurses block, though we’ve been approached by a lot of developers wanting to do just that. We will keep the gardens and everything intact.”
And perhaps surprisingly, Anne says she and Peter still get a knock on their door almost every week from former Groundslow babies and staff making a special visit.
“Three years ago it was quite exciting,” she says. “There was a knock on the door and it was the former superintendent of the hospital who had come back to visit. He worked there in the 1970s and was now living in the Central Park area of New York. He was very nostalgic when I showed him around and it was quite emotional.
“I become a tour guide for people as the nurses building hasn’t changed so much, and a lot of people still call in and want to have their pictures taken where they were born.”
Were you a Groundslow baby or do you have memories of the former hospital? Write to Colette Warbrook, including a telephone number and address, at Features Desk, The Sentinel, Forge Lane, Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent, ST1 5SS. Alternatively, email [email protected]
(c) 2008 Sentinel, The (Stoke-on-Trent UK). Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
Comments
My sister Lynn was born there too, 29 March 1962.