Inside the larger wards accommodated 12 beds with ample washing facilities. The floors were Terrazzo. Red electric light bulbs over the doors and an alarm bell in the nurses' duty room indicated when she was needed. On 17th October at 10pm the Male Pavilion, known as West Block, was hit by a lbs demolition bomb which exploded on impact.
There were two casualties, one fatal. A second time bomb also hit simultaneously but did not explode until 9. Information about the incident is scarce, however, Arthur Johnson, a reporter on the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo kept a secret diary which his son published. The book "Merseyside's Secret Blitz Diary" recounts that this was the third time bombs were dropped in this area and that the patients including children were evacuated.
He also says that soldiers were evacuated but one was killed. In , U block which housed two thoracic surgery wards and a theatre was opened - this collection of buildings has only recently been demolished to build a multi-storey car park. The opening brochure states that "facilities for graduated exercise and employment are afforded in connection with various handicrafts established in wooden buildings and sheds situated within the hospitals grounds.
Joinery and boot repairing for males, and sewing and knitting in the case of females, are carried out in the huts designed for these purposes. A poultry farm, constructed in the main by the patients themselves, is situated withing the estate boundary. Kitchen gardens provide the necessary exercise for a number of patients, both male and female". The Kelly's Directory lists Miss A. Harbreck Farm was still a working farm at this time and continued to be so for many more years. In it was run by one farm bailiff and 10 employees who also maintained the hospital grounds.
During this year the farm produced potatoes, vegetables, fruit, hay, straw and corn. There was also the profitable Aintree Piggeries connected to the farm which stayed open until This amazing aerial picture taken around the time of site clearance to build the new Tower Block shows all the buildings mentioned - in the foreground the Annexe, Harbreck House with its heated walled garden to the left.
In the middle of the picture a line of trees show the path of the brook with Fazakerley Sanatorium buildings above this. Above again shows the lay out of the City Hospital, then Lowerhouse Lane, the railway heading off towards Kirkby and then Aintree racecourse. The surgical block can be clearly seen to the right of the Sanatorium and then the area has been cleared. A document called an Estates Terrier has been recently found. Apparently it is a register of the various legal titles attaching to properties owned or used by a person or organisation.
It lists the properties which had been bought up over the years by the Hospitals Committee. Some of the documents listed date back to 's.
The size of the land involved is given, as are the dates of purchase. The names of the hospitals were eventually changed, City Hospital and the Annexe became Fazakerley Hospital.
The Sanatorium became Aintree Hospital. The Tower Block was built in the 's. Today they are all part of the same hospital. The lay out changes constantly to keep up with the growing needs of the population.
The old surgical block has recently been demolished to make way for the multi-story car park and the laboratories have disappeared under a new surgical block. Read more about Harbreck House and the Myers Family click on this link. More about Walton Hall and the Leyland Family here. More about St Georges Church in Everton here. My email address is lostliverpool gmail.
Very interesting reading, and as I work there, the old buildings are facinating. The rumours of the place being haunted would not surprise me! I really enjoyed reading it and knowing somewhat about your country. I grew up playing in those fields in the 60s - we played in Harbreck House when it was abandoned.
I also remember Hoggs Farm on Higher Lane while it was still a working farm. Such memories! My mum was a Staff nurse there for many years on the TB wards.
I remember the 9 wards belonging to the "City" they were wards A-I. I worked on D ward, the baby ward and C ward, the polio ward. My mum staffed on West Lower, the male TB ward. It was brilliant seeing the old pics and recognising everything. One of my cadet friends was on the annexe and was taken there by minibus each morning. I remember going on a day out from school around the farm at the hospital. Liverpool has a truly fascinating history. In at the age of six, I was rushed in a 'fever ambulance' I remember it was green from Orrell Park, where I had been diagnosed with diphtheria, to the 'fever hospital' which I now guess must have been part of this complex, something I've been trying to discover for the past few years.
My 'sore throat' was discovered by chance but in no time I was on my way. My only memory after that was a kind of ethereal apparition of my Mum and Dad dressed from head to foot in white hovering over me behind a window, to have their last sight of me alive. The window always puzzled me, but now this site describes 'beds separated from each other by partitions, the upper half of which is of glass'.
Since this was just before the NHS, I'm wondering if any records survived, to see when exactly I was there, and any comments. I remember a doctor uncle telling the family how unusual it was to catch diphtheria if you'd had the vaccine, which I had, and how unusual to survive if you caught it.
Michael Martin, 67 years over my sell by date. Post a Comment. Prior to the sale, the land had been the Harbreck Estate which included a country house, farms and cottages. This map of shows the area which would become hospital land. As you can see the area is starting to be developed but on the whole remains quite rural. A later post will describe some of the people who lived and worked in the area. Higher Lane takes a more meandering path as it does to this day with the more heavily shaded area possibly representing a border of trees surrounding Harbreck House.
The lane then turns sharply and heads toward Long Lane. The path of the lane changed little over the last century until the building of Altcourse Prison but some elements of the past still remain such as the sandstone walls of the farm, the redbrick walls of the original hospital, the entrance to Everton cemetery, farm buildings trees and wildflowers.
Sadly, this path and many others like it are lost. Census records show a number of lanes that have disappeared from the area such as "Old Lane" and "Intake Lane" but it is impossible to say where they were exactly. The map states that many properties around here were owned by Richard Leyland. This was Richard Bullin who assumed the name of his uncle, partner and benefactor Thomas Leyland. Walton Hall. Uncle Thomas Leyland was mayor of Liverpool three times and Richard once.
He appears to have continued to rent Harbreck Farm for a while after. Henry's life is very complex and interesting and will have its own page in the future on the Lost Liverpool blog. The 's were a time of massive social change with tenant farmers and farm workers leaving the land and moving to the cities to find work. Liverpool was expanding at an immense rate. The River Mersey teemed with ships bringing goods and people from all over the world.
The city was full of people, some natives, some heading off for a better life in the New World, many of them stopping in Liverpool as they could go no further through poverty or ill health. Scots, Irish, Welsh and English brought their families to live and work in the thriving port. Others came to escape the hardships of famine, often to find that life was no better here.
Pubs, boarding houses and brothels filled the cosmopolitan streets. It must have been a dangerous melting pot of poverty, violence and disease as immigrants crammed themselves into cellars to find shelter in a city that could not keep up. The poor who moved here for a better life accepted that it was unlikely that all their offspring would reach old age. Disease never went away, there would be times when it quietened down but it would return and spread quickly in the unhygienic conditions which existed at the time.
Asiatic cholera arrived in Liverpool in Within the year 4, official cases were recorded, many weren't, as the stigma could ruin a family. Further outbreaks took place in with 1, deaths recorded and killing 2, people. These figures don't include deaths from other diseases such as dysentery, fever and smallpox to name but a few.
Between January and June of , , Irish immigrants arrived at the Port of Liverpool trying to escape death and destruction caused by the potato famine. Starving and ill they took shelter where they could, crowding into attics and cellars in horrendous courts with no sanitary arrangements.
In escaping the terror of starvation they faced another - typhus. Meanwhile other diseases such as TB, scarlatina, measles and many more continued to take their toll. Life was harsh for many, but some people did what they could to help. Kitty Wilkinson understood the importance of cleanliness, allowing her neighbours the use of her boiler to wash infected bedding. Her actions led to the founding of the "wash house" Kitty also cared for orphaned children. She contracted typhus while caring for the sick and dying and died herself from exhaustion on 19th February He was an assistant surgeon at the Liverpool Dispensary who died while carrying out his duties.
He and another surgeon named Critchley were reported in the Liverpool Mercury of as falling victim to the deadly contamination of typhus. They were distinguished by "diligence and humanity in the discharge of their official duties" George Beaumont is buried in St George's Churchyard in Everton, forgotten by the city he gave his life for. A figure who is well remembered for his efforts to improve the health of Liverpool people is Dr William Henry Duncan who practised in Rodney Street, taking on extra duties in the Liverpool Dispensary in Vauxhall Road, where he witnessed great suffering.
He warned at the time that fever would continue while living accommodation was dirty and lacking fresh air. He believed in quarantining patients to remove them from the "miasma". The theory worked but for different reasons not known at the time. Dr Duncan was appointed as the first Medical Officer of Health in England and Public Health has remained a important facet of health care ever since, but his career was not without controversy. As part of his quest to clean up the city he enforced the closing up of cellars without contingency plans for the housing of the homeless, forcing many thousands onto the streets.
In the General Board of Health ordered the removal of persons from rooms where diseases appeared. Temporary hospitals were set up often too late; some of the sick were taken to the Workhouse spreading the diseases further amongst a susceptible population. Over the coming years and various epidemics it became apparent, although unpopular, that isolation of patients was as important as the need for social change.
Fifty years later, the City Hospital Fazakerley was one of the hospitals built around Liverpool to cope with the ever-growing need. The City Council bought the land in and opened up the Annexe section in , which can be seen in the above aerial view.
It contained beds for smallpox patients and was intended as a temporary hospital until the larger City Hospital was built, however it was still in use in the 's. This temporary hospital consisted of a brick pavilion, four wooden pavilions, an isolation pavilion and discharge block, mortuary, coalhouse as well as other small functional buildings. Harbreck House was used as the nurses quarters and administration block.
It is difficult to imagine the small beginnings of such a vast institution. The census reveals that there was an isolation hospital in Higher Lane at this time, however, there were just 18 staff, all female, unmarried or widowed between the ages of 18 to 43 staying there that night caring for 25 patients under the age of One of these people was the Matron Catherine Berry, a 32 year old single woman born in Liverpool.
Tracing Catherine back through previous census gives a little insight into the life of the First Matron. In she was living with her father William, a general labourer from Ireland, and her mother Mary, a midwife, in Romeo Street Kirkdale. By she had chosen her career, perhaps influenced by her mother, and is recorded as an officer at the Mount Pleasant Workhouse.
Moving away from the bustle of an inner city workhouse to a small hospital almost in the countryside must have been a big change for her. Higher Lane is an ancient road which almost still follows the path of old field boundaries.
Leave behind the Victorian houses at the beginning of the road, cross the railway bridge and you almost enter a time capsule, sandstone walls of old farms, large trees and as many wild blackberries as you could ever want. The course of the road has been changed by the building of the prison and its access roads but you can still see the red brick hospital walls and gateposts.
The Annexe is now lost forever under Altcourse Prison but a walk through the beautiful Bluebell Woods reveals some of the areas past. Carved sandstone blocks lie carelessly scattered among the trees hinting at the earlier history of a grand building. Ivy and wildflowers have grown over paths which were laid out as part of the wealthy merchant's estate and in later years, where patients exercised. How different this must have seemed from the squalor of the inner city. Fazakerley Brook, a tributary of the River Alt, meanders through the trees at the back of the hospital cutting under Lower Lane near the ambulance station.
The old stone bridge is hardly noticeable in the rush of the present day traffic, but floods caused by heavy rainfall will quickly remind any passer-by of the natural geography of the area. There was plenty of land at the Fazakerley site and five years later, the City Hospital was opened.
It comprised of nine ward pavilions and four isolation blocks for patients with infectious diseases other than smallpox including 25 TB beds. It also had an administration block, kitchen block, nurses home, laundry, dispensary, mortuary, doctors house and porters lodge. Many of these buildings still exist today, known to staff as "the Old Site". Facilities for staff were to be the best as they lived in, rarely going home. Troops at the hospital were visited by Queen Mary who visited Fazakerley Hospital to meet wounded and hospitalized soldiers receiving treatment for their injuries.
Timeline of events. Harbreck House, has a history of its own. Sadly, it has now gone, what remains however is, Bluebell Woods which shows some evidence of the demolished building, There are also obvious signs of a previous residential garden, including a large monkey puzzle tree. The hospital serves a population of around , in North Liverpool. South Sefton and Kirkby. As a teaching hospital, provides a range of acute and non-acute specialties, the hospital works in partnership with other organisations to provide community-based and specialist services with a world-class reputation to a population of 1.
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