Prior to updating their current promotional profile for 2018, the Friends of Frome Hospital (FoFH) are asking the community if they have any family connections, or anecdotes, relating to working or volunteering at the old Victoria Hospital in (Briars) Park Road.
FoFH have been gathering information on the proud record of the recent generation of volunteers who for almost 20 years, in the run up to the opening of the current Frome Community Hospital in 2008, and who raised over £600,000 to procure a range of additional furniture and fittings for today’s patients and visitors comfort at the state-of-the art facilities at Enos Way.
However, the trail of the people and volunteers who were involved with the Frome’s former cottage hospital appears to be dwindling, and the appeal is for people to come forward with any stories, photographs or references which can be collated and formalised into a historical record of the public health and maternity services offered to the community by earlier generations.
Friends of Frome Hospital chairman Peter Smith said, “Our current volunteers for the ‘Friends’ have an enviable record in supporting the endeavours of the modern community hospital and its staff, but we do seem to be losing sight of the generations of helpers who used to support the much-loved Victoria Hospital, which served the community so well over many, many years.
“Although there is a great deal of formal information about the old hospital in the local archives, we are looking for some of the ‘personal memoirs’ from people, or their families from the community, of what they did in support of the Victoria Hospital before its replacement just ten years ago.
“We have some scant information going back as far as 1942 in the Second World War when casualties were treated at the hospital following incendiary bombs falling in Badcox during an air raid, but we suspect there must be many other anecdotes within local families that could be noted as an important historical record for the community to keep. We do hope the public can help.”
The Friends of Frome Hospital can be contacted on friendsoffromehospital@ gmail.com
The old Hospital in (Briars) Park Road was opened in 1874 as the Frome Cottage Hospital, until 1901 when it was renamed Frome Victoria Hospital and Nursing Home with the death of Queen Victoria. It continued providing general medical cover and maternity services for a further 107 years.
