Quest for discovering the history of Good Hope begins
Question: How did Good Hope Hospital get its name?
Answer: It was the name given to a house that previously stood on the site.
The name was chosen by its owner, Ramsay Winter – and he named the house after the Cape of Good Hope after serving as a soldier in South Africa.
This is just one fascinating fact unearthed by the hospital’s Education Facilities Manager, Sheila Hannington, in her quest to piece together its history.
Now she and a number of other hospital staff are appealing for help in finding out as much as possible about the hospital’s past.
They want to set up a Good Hope history group to record facts and gather pictures and artefacts before they are lost forever.
Sheila said: “So much information and material doesn’t get collected. Very quickly it can be difficult to know how things happened. Many thousands of people have either worked at the hospital or been treated there. Many must have information, documents or artefacts that could help us.”
Sheila has already collected a sizable archive of material. It shows how some of the first hospital buildings were huts erected during the Korean War as a casualty clearing station.
Another picture shows a model of how the hospital was due to be developed in the 1970s, with a 10-storey block that was never built.
Ramsay Winter’s memory lives on in the hospital because a meeting room is named after him.
For more information, contact Andy Comber, Head of Communications, at Good Hope NHS Trust: 0121 378 2211 ext 1146, Mob: 07974 575104.
Source : Good Hope