Hospitals and First Aid Posts

In September 1939, the War Office took control of Park Hospital in Davyhulme (now called Trafford General), and converted it into the Fifth Western General Hospital. Service personnel from a number of different countries were treated there, including troops from the French Foreign Legion and German prisoners of war. In 1943 it became a U.S. Military Hospital and was staffed by American military doctors and nurses. It was said at the time to be one of the most modern and well equipped hospitals in the country.

And about once a month, we were taken in some sort of a small bus or …, I can’t remember really what it was, and we used to be taken to a hospital and I can’t remember where it is, I told you before. There was a lot of airmen in there, and some of them were American airmen that had been in crashes and they were, I think they were starting to do the reconstruction of their faces and a lot of them were blinded. So what we did was, we read letters to them that they received; it let the other nurses, the trained nurses could do other things, and if they wanted us to write, we’d write a letter for them to be posted, and that was what we did.

- Pauline Brierely, BBC People’s War website.

Professor Daniel Dougal, Lecturer in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Manchester, was the Commanding Officer of the military hospital in September 1939: a post he was only able to maintain for a year.

Casualties from the parachute training school based at Ringway Airport were amongst the hospital’s patients.

A special ward at Davyhulme Military Hospital was practically devoted to Ringway casualties, and it was a familiar sight to see officers, both instructors and pupils, hobbling about the mess in plaster casts.

- Manchester Evening News, 5 June 1947

Nurses outside Park Hospital, 1945. Trafford Local Studies Collection, cat. ref. TL7780.

American servicemen vacated the hospital in July 1945, and it was formally derequisitioned in September of the same year.

On January 1 the maternity section of Davyhulme Hospital reopens, and mothers in Stretford, Urmston, Swinton and Pendlebury, Eccles, and Irlam will be able to have their babies there for the first time since the hospital was taken over by the War Office six years ago.

- Manchester Evening News, 17 December 1945

Flixton Conservative Club, 2020

Abbotsfield Hospital

After Park Hospital was requisitioned by the War Office, there was a need within the local area for facilities to treat civilians. Abbotsfield, a large family home in Flixton, was converted for that purpose. It contained 50 beds for ‘serious surgical and medical cases’ as well as an operating theatre and X-ray department.

After the closure of the hospital, the building was taken over by Flixton Conservative Club, who still use the building today. A commemorative plaque on the side of the house recognises the work of the hospital during the war. 

Nurses at No.2 First Aid Post, Seymour Park School, Stretford. Trafford Local Studies Collection, cat. ref. TL0172.

The 1938 Air Raid Precautions Act required local authorities to make plans to protect its civilians in the event of bombing. First aid posts were organised by Air Raid Precautions (ARP) committees to act as a first response in the event of an air raid. Information about the locations of these was given to local residents so that they would know where to go in an emergency. 

Buildings with other purposes were often requisitioned to serve as first aid posts. Both Stanley House on the Avenue, in Urmston, and Flixton House were used at different points during the war, as was Seymour Park School in Stretford.