Remembering those who returned wounded from the Great War

Dunham Hall, 2014

As adventures go this one pretty much had the lot.

We were off to Dunham Massey and the exhibition “Sanctuary from the Trenches” which records the two years that the hall was the Stamford Military Hospital.*

Now given that we are only months away from the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War it is fitting that the hospital’s story should be told.

And lots of people had decided they wanted to share that story.

From what I could see most of them had arrived by car and having done the exhibition drove off passing an endless stream of other visitors.

But not us.  If you are going to have an adventure it is best to do it the old fashioned way.

So we took the bus to Stretford, caught a tram out to Altrincham and rode another bus out to the gates of Dunham Hall.

Wood Lawn, 191

The hospital was one of the 3,244 auxiliary hospitals which were set up during the conflict.

Here in Chorlton we had one at the Baptist Memorial Church on Edge Lane, and a second at the Methodist Church on Manchester Road, and there were similar ones in Whalley Ranges and Didsbury.

Some were small affairs set up in private homes and others in converted church hall.

Little is left of what went on in any of them.

Wood Lawn 1918

We have a report produced by the Red Cross on the first year of operations at the Baptist Church, some letters and newspaper clippings from both our hospitals along with the notices for the sale of everything in 1919.

It seems as quickly as they were set up they were closed down at the end of the war and with the passage of time their presence has faded from the collective memory.

All of which makes the exhibition important.

Here are the stories of those who worked there as well as the men recovering from their wounds and from illnesses they had contracted.  Men like Corporal Arthur Topham who had received shrapnel wounds and Sergeant Percy Chaplin who endured a field amputation and had to undergo a second while at Dunham Hall.

The kitchen at Dunham Hall, 2014

We were there for over an hour and as you do took in the rest of the hall which was started in the early 17th century remodelled between 1732-40 and again in the late 18th and early 20th centuries.

So there was a lot to see from grand living rooms, as well as the kitchens, workrooms and those other small places which only the servants saw.

Now this could have been the end of the adventure.  While everyone else left by car we retraced our route, made just that little uncertain because we had not checked out the bus times and the no 37 is an hourly service.

The memorial at Cahpe; Street, Altrincham, 2014

But there were no mishaps and travelling by public transport opened up one last link with the Great War which was the small war memorial down a side street.

This was Chapel Street from where 161 men volunteered during the four years and 29 failed to return.  They came from just 60 houses which have long since been demolished, leaving just the memorials.

Pictures; of Dunham Hall and the Chapel Street memorial from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and that of the doctors and nurses and men from the Red Cross Hospital of Wood Lawn in Didsbury courtesy of Rob Mellor

* Dunham Massey is the Stamford Military Hospital, http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/dunham-massey/visitor-information/article-1355804816003/