THE NHS and the people of Grantham are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the foundation stone laying of Grantham Hospital by the Mayor, Lawrence Ridge .
Eighteen months later, The Gothic style, two-storey building of Ancaster stone,was officially opened by Lady Brownlow dedicated by the Bishop of Lincoln.
It consisted of a waiting room, entrance lobby, surgeon’s sitting room, operating room, kitchen, offices and storeroom.
Convalescent and board rooms were on the ground floor with four bedrooms on the first.
The two wings, one for each sex, had seven beds each plus a nurses’ room.
The building was paid for by public donations including a £1,000 gift from Earl of Dysart and the land on which it stood, by Earl Brownlow.
But 10 years after opening it was in urgent need of repairs. The report was called for after rain began leaking through the roof in all parts of the building. Flaws were also discovered in walls of the wards.
J R Boyall of the hospital management committee said the flooring was already being replaced.
A children’s ward was opened in 1889 by Mrs Bradshaw-Isherwood, who also donated more the £300.
The first big expansion came in 1935. The six wards each had a kitchen. a sisters’ room and a room for a private nurse was built at the end of the corridor.
The charge for each room was set at 75p per day or a subscription of £2.10 per year.
Pay beds were also available in the children’s ward at £3.15 per week. Medical fees were extra and by arrangement between the patient and doctor.
Chairman of the hospital board, Lord Brownlow, said: “We shall have a hospital which for its size will be second to none in this county.”
But in 1938, there was a crisis in maternity.
Chairman Rothwell Lee said there were only 10 beds in the labour ward serving a population of 40,000.
As the world adjusted to peace in 1946, another crisis beset the hospital.
Secretary John E Ray said there were 35 nursing vacancies out of an establishment of 60.
He blamed the difficulty in foreign and Commonwealth nurses getting passports and visa to come the Britain.
A £196,000 development of three wards, the new nurses’ home, a boiler house and engineer’s department were opened at Grantham Hospital by Dr G E Godber of the Ministry of Health, in 1961.
Then in 1972, the new maternity-gynaecology department opened for babies to be born with four-star hotel amenities.
Once the three-storey, £440,000 unit was fully operational, Hill View maternity unit, Dysart Road, closed.
Originally, the department was designed to take 48 maternity cases plus 10 cots for special care babies.
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But an unpredicted fall in birth-rate caused hospital bosses to cut this to 36 cases.
This made room for 16 beds in the gynaecology unit.
The building included a delivery suite with three single delivery rooms and an operating theatre.
Waiting lists reached critical levels in 1977 with more than 1,500 people awaiting in-patient treatment.
This included 324 for orthopaedic surgery, 365 for gynocological surgery and a further 666 for general surgery.
Jim Murden of South Lincolnshire Community Health Council said: “Some people have been waiting several years for treatment.
The next crisis came in 1991 when following the Beverly Allitt murders Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre took over children’s services at Grantham Hospital.
Then in 1996 when maternity services were threatened, and other services downgraded, 1,300 people turned up the object at a meeting in St Wulfram’s Church.
The following year more than 200 protesters marched through Grantham registering their anger at plans to close the town hospital’s children’s ward. Waving placards and chanting “save our hospital”, the demonstrators marched to the hospital where they held a vigil for the afternoon.
Grantham A&E protest 2016
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