Health

General Practice

In 1910 Dr George Felix Thomson a Canadian from Nova Scotia was resident at Egerton House on the corner of
Albany Road. Dr Charles Irvine Milne joined him in 1916, before serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps in India
between 1917 and 1919.

Dr Milne had moved the practice to The Ashlands by 1930 and was there at the date of his death in 1937. His
successor was Dr James Francis Gervase Murphy, the surgery being in the Stables now used by Imagees. Dr
Murphy was also Deputy Medical Officer at the Limes Maternity Hospital.

He was joined by Dr Tellwright in 1960 who had moved the surgery to 1 Longfield Road by 1964, when he was
partnered by Dr Collins, then Dr Mayland. Dr Sarwar came in the 1970s and he was followed by Drs Forrest-Hay,
Woodcock, Dent and Stafford. Dr Tellwright retired in the late 1980s and the practice moved to the Hartshill
Medical Centre in 2012.

Hospitals

Parish Hospital

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 created the Stoke-upon-Trent Poor Law Union managed by a Board of
Guardians and the previous workhouse in Penkhull, at the junction of Trent Valley Road and Manor Court Street being
deemed inadequate a new site was chosen on London Road, close to Newcastle. The new workhouse, had its
entrance on the footpath which still exists at the rear of The Avenue, and included a parish hospital which was built in
1842 and later expanded into the City General Hospital, becoming the responsibility of Stoke-on-Trent City Council in
1929 after the demise of the Board of Guardians. It was proposed to divide responsibility for the site between the
Public Assistance Committee and the Hospitals Committee and build a new hospital on land near towards the new
dual carriageway with nine three storey blocks, and a nurses’ home. Only one of the intended blocks was built
towards The Avenue and one floor was used as a maternity hospital. A new Maternity Hospital was built on what had
been the sports field.

A plan dated 1934 showing the proposed separation between the Public Assistance Committee (blue) and the
Hospitals Committee (pink). The buildings coloured yellow were the only ones built.
North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary

The parish hospital was the only alternative to the North Staffordshire Infirmary, opened in 1802 in Etruria, near the
junction of the Trent and Mersey and Caldon Canals, which moved to a site overlooking Etruria Road in 1819. The
Infirmary was supported by voluntary contributions and admission was only by recommendation of a private
contributor, or by the fact that an employer supported the institution.

The site of the second Infirmary at Wood Hills between Etruria Road and Clough Street was opposite, after 1841, the
blast furnaces of Shelton Bar and alongside Tinkersclough, where the slag was deposited. It became necessary to find
a more healthy site and in the 1860s, a number of sites were considered, including two in Basford – Basford Park and
Kingsfield and two in Hartshill – the present site and one on Hartshill Road – the present Hartshill Park. The
foundation stone was laid by the Prince of Wales on 25 June 1866 and the Infirmary opened in 1869. King George V
laid a foundation stone of an extension in 1925 and announced that Stoke-on-Trent would be granted City status and
the hospital became the Royal Infirmary. A history of the North Staffordshire Infirmary (1802-1948) can be found in
the book written by Alun Davies. The Princes Road site closed in 2012 with the opening of the Royal Stoke University
Hospital on the City General Hospital site.

Hartshill Orthopaedic Hospital

The Orthopaedic Hospital which moved to Longfield Cottage, the former home of Herbert Minton in 1918 began as
the Hanchurch Holiday Home in 1898 under the auspices of Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland and it was the presence
of so many crippled children there and on “cripples treats” at Trentham which led to the founding of the Potteries and
Newcastle Cripples Guild in 1901 which later became the North Staffordshire Cripples Aid Society. A Convalescent
Home was created at Hanchurch for those recuperating from operations. An outpatients clinic was opened in
Woodhouse Street, Stoke in 1917 and the following year it was decided to combine the Home and Clinic and to
concentrate the work in a single place and Longfield Cottage was purchased for £2000. Viscountess Ednam, the
Duchess’s daughter became President of the Society and launched an appeal to raise £20000 to improve the basic
facilities then available. The following year she was killed in an air crash returning from France but the appeal
succeeded and the new building with an operating theatre, X-Ray room and outpatients, the Rosemary Ednam
Memorial block, was opened on 15 November 1931 by the Prince of Wales. At the entrance to the Hospital the
Rosemary Ednam Memorial Railings were erected and remain in place today. The Hospital itself closed in 1998 and
moved to the City General site.

The Limes Maternity Hospital

The Limes, dating from the 1860s was part of the Longfield estate and was lived in by various members of the family
until bought by a barrister, Thomas Bertram Udall who died in 1909. Although the Council bought the property in
1917, it did not become a Maternity Hospital until 1928, having been a private hotel operated by Mr and Mrs Fereday,
one time superintendent and matron of the Penkhull Children’s Homes. Offers to sell the associated land to the
Council in 1912 and 1914 had been rejected and was then sold as allotments. The Council, with plans to extend the
Hospital were forced to compulsorily purchase the allotments in 1929, allowing there continuation on an annual
tenancy. The extension plan was discarded in 1937 when a decision was made to create new maternity facilities on
the City General Hospital site and allotment use continued until 1960 when the land was required for the Central
Outpatients Department.

The hospital closed in the 1950s and was used as offices until the building’s demolition in 1998.