Beaufort Hospital was a military hospital in Stapleton

Stapleton, Bristol

Stapleton is an area in the north-eastern suburbs of the city of Bristol, England. The name is colloquially used today to describe the ribbon village along Bell Hill and Park Road in the Frome Valley. It borders Eastville to the South and Begbrook and Frenchay to the North...

 district of Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

 during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. Before the war it was an asylum and after the war it became a psychiatric hospital

Psychiatric hospital

Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...

.

Built next to the co-located Stapleton Hospital

Blackberry Hill Hospital

Blackberry Hill Hospital is an NHS mental health facility and redevelopment site in Fishponds, Bristol, presently the home of some facilities of the Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership....

 mental health facility, the Bristol Lunatic Asylum was the city’s response to the 1845 Mental Asylum Health Act, which laid upon local authorities the statutory duty to provide treatment facilities for in-patients. The building was by Henry Crisp, with subsequent additions by Crisp and George Oatley

George Oatley

Sir George Herbert Oatley was an English architect noted for his work in Bristol, especially the gothic Wills Memorial Building, for which he was knighted in 1925.-Early life:...

.

Originally designed for 250 in-patients it had to be extended numerous times during the next thirty years, and by the turn of the century housed some 951 long-term patients (419 male, 532 women) though this number continued to swell up to the eve of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. An expanding population required more accommodation, and numerous wings and extensions were added in the same locally quarried hard grey sandstone

Sandstone

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

 that had the uncomforting appearance of granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

. The same rough-hewn material had also been used for the construction of the vast orphanages that Stanley had passed with such trepidation in nearby Ashley Down

Ashley Down

Ashley is one of thirty-five council wards in the city of Bristol in the United Kingdom. The ward contains the areas of Ashley Down, Baptist Mills, Montpelier, St Andrew's, St Paul's and St Werburghs.-Politics:...

.

Contemporary photographs of the wards show that they were self-contained units, with separate day and night rooms. Beyond the rather severe appearance of the building and its austere interiors, there are glimpses of the extensive grounds of the hospital, an estate that contained a pig-farm and allotments that provided most of the garden produce required by the asylum and, indeed, returned a good profit to the hospital economy. Between the ominous stone wings were a number of neatly planted interior courtyards whose orchard trees and tidy flower-beds were meticulously maintained by inmates of the asylum.

By the time the first wounded soldiers arrived in late 1914 the asylum had undergone a major conversion. Like many hospitals across the country it had been requisitioned by the War Office

War Office

The War Office was a department of the British Government, responsible for the administration of the British Army between the 17th century and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the Ministry of Defence...

, which had demanded some 15,000 beds to be supplied nationally for war wounded. In his Annual Report for that year, Alderman George Pearson, chairman of the Asylum Committee of Visitors, recorded that the hospital had urgently been called into military use because the other Bristol hospitals could not cope with the increasing numbers of wounded being sent from the Western Front

Western Front (World War I)

Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...

, and more recently from the Dardanelles. Pearson’s report also noted that it would now be known as ‘Beaufort War Hospital, for the general medical and surgical treatment of sick and wounded soldiers’, the name deriving from the patronage of the Duke of Beaufort

Duke of Beaufort

Duke of Beaufort is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created by Charles II in 1682 for Henry Somerset, 3rd Marquess of Worcester, a descendant of Charles Somerset, 1st Earl of Worcester, illegitimate son of Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset, a Lancastrian leader in the Wars of the...

 who owned the land and extensive properties in the city of Bristol.

Apart from 45 patients who were retained to work the farm, the service departments and the kitchen garden, its patients were evacuated, often with very little notice, to rural asylums in the south-west, some as far afield as Cornwall

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

 and Dorset

Dorset

Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

. At War Office expense, three frantic months were spent converting the asylum to house up to 1,460 wounded soldiers. Day rooms and night wards were converted into twenty-four medical and surgical wards. To cope with emergency admissions, corridors were refurbished to provide a further 180 bed spaces. Even the maximum restraint cells were requisitioned for temporary use. Throughout the asylum, rooms were crudely adapted to act as operating theatres, radiography

Radiology

Radiology is a medical specialty that employs the use of imaging to both diagnose and treat disease visualized within the human body. Radiologists use an array of imaging technologies to diagnose or treat diseases...

 departments and pharmacy stations. Contemporary photographs show, however, that the hospital retained some of its pre-war character, and the wards are strewn with large potted plants and ornate furnishings, though little could disguise the hard deal tables, the flagstone

Flagstone

Flagstone, is a generic flat stone, usually used for paving slabs or walkways, patios, fences and roofing. It may be used for memorials, headstones, facades and other constructions. The name derives from Middle English flagge meaning turf, perhaps from Old Norse flaga meaning slab.Flagstone is a...

 floors and the high windows with their cast-iron glazing bars. Stanley Spencer

Stanley Spencer

Sir Stanley Spencer was an English painter. Much of his work depicts Biblical scenes, from miracles to Crucifixion, happening not in the Holy Land but in the small Thames-side village where he was born and spent most of his life...

, the painter who served as a medical orderly in 1915-1916, can be glimpsed in one of these photographs – a diminutive, slightly dishevelled figure in an ill-fitting tunic, surrounded by long avenues of beds, each separated by large, ungainly wooden lockers.

Just as the building was modified for military use, so its personnel were given new roles. Most of the permanent staff found themselves now working for the armed service, ‘volunteers’ given suitable military rank. Asylum Superintendent (1904–1924) Dr R. J. Vincent Blachford, became Lieutenant- Colonel RAMC

Royal Army Medical Corps

The Royal Army Medical Corps is a specialist corps in the British Army which provides medical services to all British Army personnel and their families in war and in peace...

, his horse-drawn cab was replaced with a motor car and he occupied an official apartment in the administrative block. More medical personnel were appointed, some twenty-five physician

Physician

A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

s and surgeon

Surgeon

In medicine, a surgeon is a specialist in surgery. Surgery is a broad category of invasive medical treatment that involves the cutting of a body, whether human or animal, for a specific reason such as the removal of diseased tissue or to repair a tear or breakage...

s arrived and a registrar, Dr Phillips, was appointed as deputy to the colonel. A group photograph of 1915, taken on the steps of the ivy-clad central block, captures nineteen officers, with the ranks of major and captain, all but one – Jarvis – sporting a rather fierce moustache.
According to Stanley, the female staff was no less fierce. In parallel with their male co-workers the asylum wardresses became nursing assistants, but they were to be supervised by fresh intakes of trained nurses drawn from the Red Cross, who in turn were to be managed by experienced ward sisters from the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve. In charge of this contingent of some fifty female staff was the newly appointed hospital matron, Miss Gibson, who (unlike her male counterpart) supplanted the former asylum matron. Orderlies, two to each ward, were at the bottom of the hierarchy, and they worked under the authoritarian, and unchallenged, command of the ward sister.

Veterans of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 had little affection for the military hospitals; many memoirists complained of an inhumanity that seemed to increase with distance from the battlefield. At the front, wounded soldiers were treated by fellow-combatants and by familiar regimental doctors. ‘The wounded man’ recalled one soldier, ‘ is in a moment a little baby and all the rest become the tenderest of mothers. One holds his hand; another lights his cigarette. Before this, it is given to few to know the love of those who go together through the long valley of the shadow of death.’ (76) All this changed in the rear of the battle zone and in the general hospitals back in ‘Blighty

Blighty

Blighty is a British English slang term for Britain, deriving from the Hindustani word vilāyatī , from Persian vilayet and ultimately from Arabic wilayah, originally meaning something like "province"...

’. Given the restrictions on wartime transport their journey from the front might be surprisingly rapid. Gilbert Spencer

Gilbert Spencer

Gilbert Spencer R.A. was a British painter of landscapes, portraits figure compositions and mural decoarions. He worked in oils and watercolor...

 (Stanley Spencer

Stanley Spencer

Sir Stanley Spencer was an English painter. Much of his work depicts Biblical scenes, from miracles to Crucifixion, happening not in the Holy Land but in the small Thames-side village where he was born and spent most of his life...

's younger brother who also served as a medical orderly) recalled his first terrifying moments at Beaufort when he was surrounded by a ‘ward full of wounded Gallipoli soldiers, their skins sunburnt and their clothes bleached and the soil of Suvla Bay still on their boots.’ (1)

Spencer's experiences of the hospital were later incorporated into his paintings for the Sandham Memorial Chapel

Sandham Memorial Chapel

Sandham Memorial Chapel is in the village of Burghclere, Hampshire, England. It is a Grade I listed 1920s decorated chapel, designed by Lionel Pearson as a memorial to the memory of Lieutenant Henry Willoughby Sandham, who had died at the end of World War I. It was commissioned by his sister and...

 at Burghclere

Burghclere

Burghclere is a village and civil parish in the Basingstoke and Deane district of Hampshire, England. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 1,138...

, near Newbury

Newbury, Berkshire

Newbury is a civil parish and the principal town in the west of the county of Berkshire in England. It is situated on the River Kennet and the Kennet and Avon Canal, and has a town centre containing many 17th century buildings. Newbury is best known for its racecourse and the adjoining former USAF...

, West Berkshire

West Berkshire

West Berkshire is a local government district in the ceremonial county of Berkshire, England, governed by a unitary authority . Its administrative capital is Newbury, located almost equidistantly between Bristol and London.-Geography:...

.

The hospital was later renamed Glenside Hospital.

From January 1993, the co-located Manor Park and Glenside hospitals merged to become the jointly named Blackberry Hill Hospital

Blackberry Hill Hospital

Blackberry Hill Hospital is an NHS mental health facility and redevelopment site in Fishponds, Bristol, presently the home of some facilities of the Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership....

. Patients of Glenside were assessed for capability, with many placed within the Care in the Community

Care in the Community

Care in the Community is the British policy of deinstitutionalization, treating and caring for physically and mentally disabled people in their homes rather than in an institution...

 programme, while the residual were moved in to new buildings constructed on the former Manor Park site for their long term care.

The former Glenside Hospital campus was bought in 1996 when the Avon and Gloucestershire College of Health and Bath and Swindon College of Health Studies, joined with the existing University of the West of England

University of the West of England

The University of the West of England is a university based in the English city of Bristol. Its main campus is at Frenchay, about five miles north of the city centre...

's Faculty of Health and Community Studies.