It’s the End of the Line for Hospital After 112 Yrs

By ADRIAN BUTLER

A SOUTHPORT hospital which has looked after patients for 112 years finally shuts its doors this week.

General hospital care at Southport general infirmary will cease to exist on Saturday as the last three departments move out of the historic building.

Final clinics were being held today at the site in Scarisbrick New Road.

Managers said the building had served people well but was too out- of-date and expensive to keep going.

The Audiology and Ear Nose and Throat Departments as well as the Eye Unit are about to move into the main Southport and Ormskirk hospital sites.

A new ophthalmic theatre has been created at Ormskirk and there is a new eye clinic at Southport. Audiology clinics will be held in Southport’s former midwifery unit.

Now the only healthcare in the building will be a Mersey Care service for elderly mentally ill patients.

Southport infirmary dates back even further than the 1895 building.

In 1825 the Southport infirmary and dispensary opened in Lord Street, providing medicine for local handloom weavers.

Then, in 1870, the hospital moved to Virginia Street, where it was big enough to accommodate 12 patients and had isolation wards for sufferers of fever.

When it first opened, the building cost pounds 25,000 and housed 60 patients.

But this figure grew when World War I broke out.

Medical research in the 1920s led to an Artificial Sunlight Department, and when the NHS was founded in 1948, the infirmary became one of 14 new state-controlled hospitals in Merseyside.

By the 1980s departments had started to move in to the new hospital site on Town Lane.

Chief executive Jonathan Parry said: “This is the end of an era. In one way we will be sorry to go, but we are delighted to finally be able to move to newly-refurbished, modern accommodation.”

adrianbutler@liverpoolecho.co.uk

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