What Miss Sarah Kate Sloane did in the Great War ..... part 1

Now, I am only at the beginning of the story of Ms Sloane, who was born in 1871 and died in 1965, but already it promises to be a fascinating piece of research.

British War Medal, 1914-1919

She was born and died in Leicester and spent most of her life there, save for those periods when as a Red Cross nurse she served in hospitals across the country and in France during the Great War.

And it was her wartime medals which drew me into her story, and while I have accumulated some biographical details, I know there is much more.

She was awarded The British War Medal, 1914-18, The Allied Victory Medal, 1914-19, The War Medal Medal, 1939-45, and the Defence Medal, 1939-45, and the first two carry an inscription which includes her name and the letters V.A.D, which refer to her role as a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment.

Members of V.A.D. performed a variety of tasks in Red Cross Hospitals, from nursing to cleaning, washing, and cooking, as well as administration and many also took on fund raising activities in the community.

Ms Sloane came from a medical family and both her father and brother were doctors, which makes her choice of nursing and unsurprising one.

Evington House, 2022, formerly Kighton V.A.D., Hospital

The Red Cross records show she served from 1915 through to 1917, at various Red Cross hospitals, starting at the Knighton V.A.D., hospital close to where she lived.

From 1916 she was at No.2 B.R.C. Hospital in Rouen, followed by Frensham Hill Military Hospital,  and Ullesthorpe Court, & Charnwood V.A.D. Hospitals.

After which she worked for the Discharged Soldiers & Sailors organization, which was part of the Ministry of Labour and focused on finding suitable employment for men no longer in the forces.

So far, I have no pictures of Ms Sloane, but I know where she lived in Leicester, and some at least of the houses are still standing today, as is the Knighton V.A.D Hospital which is now known as Evington House and stands in Evington Park.

Evington House, 2022, formerly Kighton V.A.D., Hospital

The house dates from the early 19th century, and bits maybe much older.  In its time it was owned by one family with links to the campaign against the slave trade, and in 1914 was lent by its then owner to the Red Cross.

There are various accounts of the house including its time as a hospital and many also include a fascinating account of the daily routines by Miss Alice Henderson who was the commandment which appeared in the Wyggeston Girls Gazette in 1919.

I suspect much of what Miss Henderson outlined in the article would have been familiar to Sarah Sloane, and was pretty much the lot of many who worked in Red Cross Hospitals.*

And that at present is pretty much all there is.  I know she arrived back from Algiers in 1931, left over £55,000 at her death in 1965 and lived for 30 years at 8 University Road, in Leicester.

Defence Medal, 1939-45

But I don’t have a clue how she voted, what she thought of the big issues of the day or how she occupied her time after war service.

That said I am confident I will find out more.  There are people who have included her in their own family history records, and I await a reply from the Leicester Records Office so there is much more to play for.

All of which leaves me with that odd reflection that history can be messy and can surprise you.

So, when I started the search for the story of Sarah Kate’s medals, I had no idea that she came from Leicester or that our Josh and Polly would turn out to live just minutes away from both Knighton V.A.D., hospital, and her home on University Road.

But then that’s the fun of the past.

Location; Leicester, and elsewhere

Pictures; Miss Sloane’s medal, courtesy of David Harrop and Evington House, formerly Knighton V.A.D., hospital, from the collection of Josh Simpson

Sources; census records, 1901-1921, Red Cross Records, 1914-1919, Baptismal record, 1871, various street directories  and electoral registers, 1920-1930, Probate Records

* Evington’s VAD Hospital, Evington Echo, December 19th, 2014, https://evingtonecho.uk/evingtons-vad-hospital/

& Evington House, Evington Park, https://storyofparksleicester.com/park-histories/evington-park/#:~:text=This%20house%20is%20said%20to,hunter%20gatherers%20roaming%20over%20it.&text=In%20Roman%20times%20and%20on,have%20been%20a%20Roman%20cemetery

Never be surprised at what you find on Wilbraham Road ............. nurses and Red a Cross Hospital

Now this is just the start of that story of a Red Cross hospital on Wilbraham Road and at this stage I have no idea where it will lead.

Until recently I knew that during the Great War the Red Cross ran two hospitals in Chorlton, one in the Sunday school of the Baptist Church on Edge Lane and the other in the Sunday School on Manchester Road.

The first opened in 1914 and the second must date from sometime in 1916 or 1917.

But given the demand for hospital beds I have always wondered if there were not more.

Just down the road in Whalley Range and south into Didsbury a number of private homes were given over to the Red Cross so it seemed logical that Chorlton must have had its own share of smaller Red Cross establishments.

That said none have turned up in the records of which the best is a book by the Red Cross on their work in east Lancashire which offers up a wealth of detail about the hospitals they ran.

But the book was published in 1916 and concentrates on those hospitals which had been set up between 1914-15 and so while the hospital on Edge Lane is included the one on Manchester Road is absent.

So I was intrigued when Pawel Lech Michalczyk told me that “the house next to the Chorlton Conservative Club is listed as a hospital in 1917.  It was Wycombe, and described as an auxiliary military hospital in the 1917 Slater's street directory.”

Now that set me off looking and back in 1911 Wycombe was home to Mr and Mrs Barnes, their four children and Miss Mary Jane Williams who was 27 and employed as a domestic servant.

Mr Williams described himself a “Merchant” and is listed in the 1911 directory as the “Managing Directory of James Barnes Ltd.”

Now Wycombe is a big house which was described as having 12 rooms making it large enough to have been run as a small auxiliary hospital.

And that is where the story stops, but I rather think it will only be a pause.

Picture;  picture postcard possibly Willow Bank Red Cross Hospital, circa 1914 courtesy of David Harrop,

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 12 ....... an engraved silver cup 1917

Continuing the  story of Chorlton in just a paragraph. They are in no particular order, and have been selected purely at random.

Presented to the Wesleyan Church by the Wounded Soldiers of the Wesleyan School Hospital Xmas 1917.  I doubt whether many people know that during the Great War we had two voluntary hospitals here in Chorlton.   One was in the Methodist Sunday school building on Manchester Road and the other in the Sunday School of the MacLaren Memorial Baptist Church on the corner of Wilbraham and Sibson Road.  Sadly little has survived in the form of records.  We have a few newspaper references, letters from some of the medical staff and patients, and a contemporary account in a Red Cross book of the work undertaken to care for the recovering soldiers. So this silver engraved cup is an important object recording not only the gratitude of the soldiers but the voluntary efforts of the people of Chorlton.






Picture; courtesy of Philip Lloyd

Miss Ada Bidgood of 11 Holland Road, Chorlton-cum- Hardy steps out of the shadows

Here is another of our Red Cross nurses who served here in Chorlton in the Great War.

Miss Bidgood's shift

She was Miss Ada Bidgood, and I doubt I would have ever come to have known about her work as a Red Cross nurse, were it not for postcard with her duty rota for Saturday August 19th starting at 1.30.

The card is undated, but on the reverse carried Miss Bidwood’s address which was 11 Holland Road.

On the surface it isn’t much to go on, but it was enough.

There were three Red Cross hospitals in Chorlton.

Two were situated in the Sunday School buildings of The McLaren Baptist Memorial Church on Edge Lane, and the Methodist Church on Manchester Road, and the last was in a private house beside the old Conservative Club.

A search of the Red Cross data base revealed that Ada was at the Baptist Church and had started in the April of 1916, continuing through till the April of 1918, working part time, and engaged in “ward and dispensary duties”.

She lived with her parents and three siblings, and the family moved around, having lived in Yorkshire, Durham and Warwickshire, which may in part be because her father, described himself as a Publisher District Manager, although by 1939 he recorded his status as a “retired art dealer”.

At present I know little more about Ada, other than that she was born in 1885 and died in 1975 in Stockport and never married.

Her address

But it is a start and offers up a name and a few brief biographical details of one our nurses.

The McLaren Baptist Church was the first to offer their Sunday School as a convalescent hospital.

The story of its first was written up by the East Lancashire Branch of the British Red Cross as part of “An Illustrated Account of the Work of the Branch During the First Year of the War.” *

And its presence represented a massive commitment on the part of the 16,000 Chorlton people.

The number of voluntary nurses and orderlies ran to 89 and another 70 worked at some point in the kitchen.

There were also regular fund-raising activities, loans of equipment and twice weekly ward concerts.

 More than anything it shows the level to which the war effort was supported and funded by voluntary actions.

 Like many churches of the period it had a large Sunday school and it was this which was converted into the hospital in November 1914.

Soldiers outside the MCLaren Baptist Church, date unknown

Like many churches of the period it had a large Sunday school and it was this which was converted into the hospital in November 1914.

 “a ward of 31 beds, kitchens, mess room, bath room, dispensary, pack stores, linen rooms, matrons’ room and office” all of which were on the ground floor.

The building was large enough to accommodate


The Sunday School to the left, converted into a hospital
The original plan had been for 25 beds but in May 1915 an extra six beds were added.

What is astounding is that the cost of equipping the hospital which came to £140 was met by public subscription after an appeal for funds from the local Red Cross, and that this was “in addition to the liberal amount of hospital appurtenances so freely furnished on loan by the public.”

Nor did the generosity stop there. For while the War Office allowance for each man per day was 2 shillings [10p], the average cost for the upkeep per bed was 25 shillings [£1.25p] which again was met by the public through “subscriptions, donations and the proceeds of entertainments.”

During that first year of the war 159 volunteers worked at the hospital and all but four came from the township.

There are many familiar names, some whose families had been in the township for generations.

Ann Higginbotham aged 22 was the daughter of Alfred and Emily whose family had farmed by the green since the 1840’s.

There were also newer names like H. F. Dawson and A. H. Dawson or the Kemps. Miss Kemp worked in the kitchen while Harry her father was on the committee.

He had two chemists’ shops and would be remembered for over half a century by Kemp’s Corner.

And to these we can add Miss Ada Bidgood, who I now also know was due to start her shift on August 19th, 1917

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Miss Ada Bidgood’s postcard, date unknown, courtesy of David Harrop, and The McLaren Baptist Memorial Church, date unknown from the collection of Chris Griffiths


*Chorlton-cum-Hardy Red Cross Hospital, East Lancashire Branch of the British Red Cross Society Sherratt & Hughes, 1916

The forgotten hospital in Longford Hall

 I know l shouldn't be surprised that Longford Hall was given over to use by the Red Cross as an Auxiliary Hospital during the Great War.

Many family homes, along with schools and other public buildings were requisitions or volunteered as hospitals for soldiers  recovering from wounds and illnesses. 

Here in Chorlton l have tracked three with the promise of another, and over the years l have written about more in Didsbury, Whalley Range, Salford and across Manchester and beyond.

I just didn't think of Longford Hall but I should. It was a fine large building, formerly the residence of the  Ryland family and from 1908 it was owned by Stretford.

So at the outbreak of war it became a centre of war activity including its role as a hospital.

After the war most of these hospitals were returned to private use or continued as hospitals. 

The equipment from beds to cooking pans and typewriters were sold off and with two generations their existence had started to fade.

So l am off to do the research, starting with one of those scrap books recording photographs and comments of the hospital.

Location; Longford Hall

Pictures; pictures, undated courtesy of Bill Sumner

Discovering those who cared for the sick and wounded in Chorlton during the Great War

I have moved just a little closer to some of the men and women who served during the Great War.

And it comes from a database by the Red Cross which has put  on line its records from the Great War.

Even before the war started the Red Cross had made preparations for coping with the large numbers of wounded who would be returning from the battlefields.

So when the conflict did begin voluntary hospitals were established across the country.
Some were in school halls, and others in private houses and relied on the voluntary support of the local community.

Here in Chorlton we had two, one on Edge Lane in the Sunday School of the McLaren Baptist Church and the other in the Methodist Sunday School on Manchester Road and across south Manchester there were more.

Until recently I knew little of the men and women who served in the hospitals.

I had one list for the first year of the war of those who worked at the Baptist Church a few names from newspaper correspondence and the odd record of some of the administrators.

But the Red Cross records will bring them out of the shadows, for along with their names and addresses there are brief details of what they did.

Some are more detailed than others so those for Eltham in south east London describe particular duties. So I know that Miss Ada Fanny Boultbee, assisted the “sick & wounded, did  convoy duty. Well Hall Station any time day and night at 1. 1/2 hours notice. tea. Coffee, milk, ready.”

And provided a wealth of detail
“August 5th 1914. Struck Divisional Camp at Chichester. 7. 1914. Organizing Hos: cores: Soldiers & Sailors Institute Woolwich. 30th. 1914- Accepted responsibility of sick & wounded Convoy Duty Well Hall. Col: Stephenson with request for same from Col. Simpson. Herbert Hos:- Sept. 7th. 1914 First Convoy. 3/4 hour notice. All ready. 16 -1914 Mobilized by Col. Stephenson at "Cathay" Eltham. S.E. B.R.X.S. Brassard No.7. A.M.S. July - 1917 Demolized. Col: Simpson' of opinion that that Sick & Wounded Convoy Duty at Well Hall Station was no longer rec. under altered conditions of transport. Ada St.John. Boultbee. Hon. Comdt L /26.”

Sadly those for Chorlton are less detailed but there is still a suprising amount of information.
Some worked at the Baptist Church and another at Manchester Road while the rest were spread out across Whalley Range and Didsbury with one at the  2nd Western General Hospital in town.

So far the Red Cross has only published surnames from A to B but that has still revealed twelve Chorlton people and tow of those I have tracked on the census for 1911.

In time it will be possible to find out much more about their backgrounds and what happened to them after the war which in turn will throw light on the degree to which Chorlton did its bit.

But I do know that Frank Burrows of 71 Reynard Road was engaged in   March 1917.

He was 25 years old  was paid 35 shillings a week and was an orderley at Didsbury  College Hospital.

Before the war he had worked as an insurance clerk.

And Miss Mabel Coatman also 25 of the Lyndale on Barlow Moor Road worked at Lancaster House Hospital in Whalley Range as a support assistant.

So it is all there to be found.


Pictures; doctors and nurses and men from the Red Cross Hospital of Wood Lawn in Didsbury circa 195, courtesy of Rob Mellor, and the Edge Lane Red Cross Hospital circa 1924,  from the Lloyd collection

*British Red Cross,  http://www.redcross.org.uk/About-us/Who-we-are/History-and-origin/First-World-War

The Red Cross hospitals of Chorlton during the Great War

G.B.Simpson and friends, circa 1918

The Great War has now passed from living memory. 

A conflict which claimed ten million dead, blighted the lives of millions more, and which is commemorated in towns and villages across the country has now really become a piece of history.

 Here in Chorlton there are a number of war memorials including one in the grounds of the Methodist Church on Manchester Road another in the parish church and a few more including that in Southern Cemetery. 

There are familiar local names and in some cases more than one member of the same family.

Few however now know of the contribution that was made by people in the township to those young men who were wounded and were cared for in Chorlton and Whalley Range.

 Soon after the war began the Sunday school halls at the McLaren Baptist Church on Edge Lane and the Methodist Church on Manchester Road were turned over to convalescent hospitals.

The story of the first year of the military hospital in the Sunday school of the MacLaren Memorial Baptist Church on the corner of Wilbraham and Sibson Road was written up by the East Lancashire Branch of the British Red Cross as part of “An Illustrated Account of the Work of the Branch During the First Year of the War.”*

The McLaren Memorial Church circa 1920

It represented a massive commitment on the part of the 16,000 Chorlton people.

The number of voluntary nurses and orderlies ran to 89 and another 70 worked at some point in the kitchen. 

There were also regular fund raising activities, loans of equipment and twice weekly ward concerts.

 More than anything it shows the level to which the war effort was supported and funded by voluntary actions.

 Like many churches of the period it had a large Sunday school and it was this which was converted into the hospital in November 1914.

 “a ward of 31 beds, kitchens, mess room, bath room, dispensary, pack stores, linen rooms, matrons’ room and office” all of which were on the ground floor.

The building was large enough to accommodate

The Sunday School to the left, converted into a hospital

The original plan had been for 25 beds but in May 1915 an extra six beds were added.

What is astounding is that the cost of equipping the hospital which came to £140 was met by public subscription after an appeal for funds from the local Red Cross, and that this was “in addition to the liberal amount of hospital appurtenances so freely furnished on loan by the public.”

Nor did the generosity stop there. For while the War Office allowance for each man per day was 2 shillings [10p], the average cost for the upkeep per bed was 25 shillings [£1.25p]which again was met by the public through “subscriptions, donations and the proceeds of entertainments.”

Uknown soldier

During that first year of the war 159 volunteers worked at the hospital and all but four came from the township.

There are many familiar names, some whose families had been in the township for generations.

Ann Higginbotham aged 22 was the daughter of Alfred and Emily whose family had farmed by the green since the 1840’s.

There were also newer names like H. F. Dawson and A. H. Dawson or the Kemps. Miss Kemp worked in the kitchen while Harry her father was on the committee. He had two chemists’ shops and would be remembered for over half a century by Kemp’s Corner.

*Chorlton-cum-Hardy Red Cross Hospital, East Lancashire Branch of the British Red Cross Society Sherratt & Hughes, 1916

Pictures; The McLaren Memorial Baptist Church, Edge Lane, from the Lloyd Collection, G.B.Simpson, and friends circa 1918 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The hotel …. the Red Cross hospital ….. and the home of Mr. and Mrs. Barnes of Wilbraham Road

Now every house has a story ….. the challenge is discovering what lies behind the front door.

Wycombe Hotel, date unknown

And that is what brought me to the Wycombe Hotel.

It is picture which has sat in the collection for nearly a decade, and it has always been a photograph I passed over.

There is no date, no location listed on the back, and no clue as to an owner, and so I always thought its story was lost.

But not so, because on a grey wet day with the rain coming down like stair rods, I thought I would have one last go.

The house looks vaguely familiar and if pushed I would say we were somewhere on Wilbraham Road, close to the old Conservative Club.

Wycombe House, 2016

A search of the trade and street directories revealed no Wycombe Hotel, but in the 1911 directory there was a Wycombe House which was indeed on Wilbraham Road beside the Con Club

It was the home of  Mr. and Mrs. Barnes, their four children and Mary Jane Williams, who was employed as a domestic servant.

Mr. Barnes described himself a “Merchant” and is listed in the same 1911 directory as the “Managing Directory of James Barnes Ltd.” 

He died in 1921, leaving an estate worth £52,253, which went to his four children.

But more interesting in a sense than the will, is that he died in Llandudno, that gentle Welsh seaside resort which was the last resting place for many elderly and comfortably well-off ex pats from across the border.

Now, I don’t yet know when he left Chorlton, but by 1917 the house had become an auxiliary Red Cross Hospital.

I had known about the two big hospitals in the Sunday Schools of the Methodist Church on Manchester Road, and the Baptist Church on Edge Lane but Wycombe had passed me by.

A gate post, 2016

But it was a common enough practice for families to offer up their homes for use by the Red Cross, and at the end of the war not all returned to residential use.

So perhaps sometime after 1918, the house became a hotel, and only much later reverted to domestic use.

All of which means I will have to go down to Central Ref and wander over the directories for the years after the Great War looking for a hotel.

That said one always must be careful, because while researching the family I came across the military records of a young man who I took to be one of the sons of Mr. Barnes and with mounting excitement I trawled the documents only to discover it was not he.

Such are the twisty, turny, paths of research.  Still I rather think we have some of Wycombe’s story, and intime thre will be more.

Location: Chorlton;

Pictures; Wycombe Hotel, date unknown from the Lloyd Collection, and Wycombe House, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Revealing more on the story of Private Jordan .............. from Cheltenham to Cairo

This is one of those sad postscripts, but one that holds the promise of discovering more about a soldier of the Great War.

Cairo War Memorial Cemetery

Yesterday I wrote about Private H F Jordan who spent time recovering from his wounds in the St John’s Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham.*

During his time there he left a message in the autograph book which had been started by Ms Rachel Wattis.

But apart from a record of the medals he was awarded and an entry in the UK Army Register of Soldier’s Effects I could find nothing more about him.

Today I heard from David Harrop who owns the autograph book.  He had also gone looking for Private Jordan and found his grave in Cairo where he was buried in February 1919.

“This cemetery is within the Old Cairo cemetery area, which is situated approximately 5 kilometres south east of the centre of Cairo. 

The cemetery area is on the south side of the road Salah Salem, which runs west/east from the River Nile towards the green park area approximately 2 kilometres beyond and eventually towards the Citadel.”**

And Private Jordan rests close to the Records Office.

The message from Private Jordan, December 1916

We still have no idea how he died but we now have his full name and his date of birth and armed with these it should be possible to find out a little bit more about Frederick Thomas Harry Jordan who died aged 26 in Egypt four months after the end of the Great War.

And in doing so take the story of that message in the autograph book just a little further forward.

Picture; Cairo War Memorial Cemetery, courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commissions, http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/11000/CAIRO%20WAR%20MEMORIAL%20CEMETERY and Private Jordan's message from Blighty, the autograph book of St John's Red Cross Hospital, Cheltenham from the collection of David Harrop

Image from the autograph book, © David Harrop


*Blighty ............. a unique record from the Great War part 2 looking for Private H F Jordan, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/blighty-unique-record-from-great-war.html

**CAIRO WAR MEMORIAL CEMETERY, Commonwealth War Graves Commissions, http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/11000/CAIRO%20WAR%20MEMORIAL%20CEMETERY

Continuing the search for Miss Robertson of Cheltenham ........ born in India, who tended the wounded in the Great War

Now I know I will find out more about Miss Kathleen Roberts, but I fear it won’t be yet.

And that is a shame because I have now seen the medals she was awarded by the Red Cross for her work during the Great War.

The little I do know is intriguing enough.  She was born in Coonar in Maddras which was one of the hill stations favoured by the British during the hot season in India, her maternal grandmother came from Tasmania and was the widow of an Indian army officer who brought her children up in Cheltenham.

So I wasn’t surprised that this was where I found Miss Robertson in the April of 1911 and it made sense that she should be working in a Red Cross hospital in the town.

But that pretty much is it.

There were promising leads.  I found a Kathleen Robertson on the shipping lists for India both going out and coming back in 1934 but on closer inspection this was not her.

I found three of her aunts and an uncle and am still looking for more on her grandmother, Agnes Baker but  the trail stops at 1872.

In that year  Mrs Baker was in India.  This I know because three of her children were born there between 1872 and 1877, while her final child was born in Cheltenham in 1879.

What of course is revealing is the light it shines on those families who served the Empire.  Mrs Baker had been born in Tasmania but lived part of her married life in India briefly coming back in 1873 when she gave birth to her fourth child.

Some of the records for both her and her granddaughter will be in India and so may prove more difficult to access and I have yet to find any references to Miss Robertson’s parents but in time they will tumble out of the shadows.

The real search however is for young Miss Robertson, after all now that I have seen her medals I must go on.

Pictures; the Red Cross medals of Miss Kathleen Robertson, courtesy of David Harrop 

*Red Cross Nurses, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Red%20Cross%20Nurses

Blighty ............. a unique record from the Great War part 4 setting the story straight

Ms Wattis explains

Now I am no where nearer finding out anything more about Ms Rachael Wattis who in the August of 1916 opened an autograph book for the patients of the St John’s Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham.

It is a unique record of some of the men who spent time in the hospital, comprising 29 entries ranging from poems, and pictures to short passages expressing gratitude for the care the men received

The hospital which wasn't St John's

It comes from the collection of David Harrop who maintains a permanent exhibition of memorabilia from the Great War at the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery.

So far I have been able to find out something about three of the men who made a contribution in the book and in time it should be possible to find out something about the remaining twenty-seven along with the two Red Cross personnel who are also mentioned.

But today this is a correction because in the first of the stories I included a picture of what I thought was the Red Cross Hospital

St John's Red Cross Hospital

It was an easy enough mistake to make given that it showed a group of Red Cross nurses and soldiers and was with the autograph book.

It is a Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham and just maybe Ms Wattis is amongst the staff but it is not St John’s

And this I know because of help from the   Cheltenham Local & Family History Library who kindly supplied me with an image of the hospital along with some more taken from a copy of a local newspaper.*

At which point I do have to express my thanks to local history and studies centres which are often the first point of call when attempting to tell a story, especially when that story takes off all over the country.

Inside St John's

So I owe a special debt of gratitude to the archivist at East Dunbartonshire who helped me solve the mystery of how a photograph of a cinema in Chorlton taken in 1920 could end up in Scotland, a special thanks to the Derby library who brought some of my family out of the shadows and to Greenwich and Manchester who I use a lot and never tell me to go away.

And so to Cheltenham where amongst their records was that picture of the Red Cross hospital from the Cheltenham Chronicle and Gloucestershire Graphic of July 31 1915.

And there is no way that the picture I originally thought was St John’s can be so because it had been a school which quite clearly my picture is not.

All of which is confirmed by the remaining images from the Cheltenham Chron which show what were either very large classrooms or the school hall, none of which would have fitted inside the grand house on my postcard.

And the added bonus is that the newspaper provided more staff names which can be followed up and perhaps reveal a link to Ms Wattis.

Average duration of patients in St John's, 1915-1919

Nor is that all for there is also the final report on St John’s from the Red Cross covering the four years from when it opened in June 1915 through till its close in January 1919.**

It had been equipped to take 160 patients which were “increased to 180, [and] was exceptionally well adapted for a hospital having no stairs; its proximity to both railway stations ..... and on several occasions individual cases on ambulance trains, too desperately ill to proceed to the North, were detrained in Cheltenham and brought to St John.”**

In time it will be useful to compare this report with the one we have for one of our Red Cross hospitals here in Chorlton, and of course it will send me off into Cheltenham to explore some of those who kept St John going.

Above all the report offers a context for those 29 entries.  I know that 2995 men passed through the hospital and that only 15 died and it may be that some at least of the 29 had stays matching the averages for 1916 and 1917.

It is only a start but we are a little closer to those men and women who spent their time in St John’s

Additional research from Cheltenham Local & Family History Library, http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/article/109250/Cheltenham-Local-and-Family-History-Centre

Entry from Blighty, © David Harrop

Picture; Cheltenham Chronicle and Gloucestershire Graphic July 31 1915, courtesy of Cheltenham Local & Family History Library, cheltlocalstudies@gloucestershire.gov.uk

* Cheltenham Local & Family History Library, http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/article/109250/Cheltenham-Local-and-Family-History-Centre

**St John’s V.A. Hospital Glos, 108 final Report from the Red Cross in Gloucestershire 1914-1919 quoted from, St. John's VA hospital Cheltenham http://www.angelfire.com/az/garethknight/redcross/stjohns.html

Miss Kathleen Robertson, a Red Cross hospital in Cheltenham and a hill station in India

I am off looking for the story of Ms Kathleen Robertson.

The Nilgiri Hills

She was a nurse with the Red Cross in Cheltenham during the Great War and her medals have just been acquired by David Harrop who has a collection of memorabilia from both world wars.

David was keen to add theses to the collection because they compliment an autograph book from the St John’s Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham which was started in 1916 and ran through to the end of the war.

The book contains poems, pictures and comments from men recovering from wounds.  Some of the men were wounded at Gallipoli and others in the opening weeks of the Battle of the Somme.

Now I think I have found her in Cheltenham in 1911, and already the story has taken a fascinating turn.  She was born in 1897 at Coonoor in Madras which  is the second highest hill station in the Nilgiri mountains. It was a popular summer and weekend getaway for the British during the colonial days.

And I suspect that her mother will have chosen to settle there for Kathleen’s birth.
Now that is a bit of a supposition but in 1911 she was living with her grandmother at 29 Park Place Cheltenham.

All of which would suggest that her parents were still in India.

So there is much still to do from tracking her mother and father, discovering  more about Miss Robertson’s time the Red Cross and what happened to her after the Great War.

This will I hope involve the help of the local studies centre in Cheltenham who may be able to locate the staff list of the hospital.  As yet the Red Cross have yet to digitize all their staff records and I am hoping the centre will be able to find her.


And along the way I might find out more about her grandmother who was born in Tasmania.

In the meantime I await David’s pictures of Miss Robertson’s medals.

Picture; Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu  http://www.flickr.com/photos/enchant_me/144986171/sizes/o/ , his file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en, no changes were made to this image

Blighty ............. a unique record from the Great War part 2 looking for Private H F Jordan

This was the message that Private H F Jordan left in the autograph book of the St John’s Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham.*

He was recovering from wounds in December 1916 and as a mark of his gratitude he wrote a short thank you to the nurse who had cared for him.

He was one of 29 men recovering from wounds sustained in Gallipoli and on the Somme who left a mix of messages from poems, drawings, paintings and short comments.

In the fullness of time it should be possible to find out something about each of these 29 and the nurses who are also mentioned in the book.

So far a search for Private H F Jordan has revealed that he received the British War Medal and the Victory Medal and that he died in March 1920.

I know he served in the Essex Regiment and that there is an entry for him in the UK Army Register of Soldier’s Effects and that is all.

But there will be more.

Already I know  a little more about the hospital and in time with the help of Cheltenham Local Studies Centre we should have a series of photographs which will give a greater context to the time he spent in Cheltenham.

Picture; the entry of Private H F Jordan, December 1916 from Blighty, the autograph book of St. John's Red Cross Hospital, Cheltenham from the collection of David Harrop

*Blighty, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Blighty

Blighty ............. a unique record from the Great War part 1 with a bit more from Canada

I am looking at a picture of the staff and patients of the St John’s Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham on July 1915.

And somewhere on the photograph maybe Rachel Wattis who in the following year later bought a sketch pad from J.J.Banks & Son which became an autograph book used by the men convalescing from their wounds.

They contributed poems, comments and sketches and reading them on this warm sunny day in June is to be taken back in an instant to that hospital and to the men recovering from wounds received the year before at Gallipoli and many more from the Battle of the Somme which was still in full swing.

In the fullness of time I will go looking for Rachel Wattis.  As yet the Red Cross have not completed their mammoth task of putting all their personnel from the Great War on line and so far a search for Ms Wattis has revealed only a possible candidate leaving in Birmingham in 1911.

Likewise I will also look for the identities of the men who left a contribution partly to satisfy my own curiosity but also because I think it is important.

After all by sheer luck the autograph book has survived a century and it is important that the men and women who made the book should be recorded and something of their lives before and after 1916 brought out of the shadows.

So this is just the first of a series of posts which tries to explore the stories of these people caught up in one of the great events of the last century.

And from those pages I have selected two entries, neither of which I have researched yet.

I could have chosen others including that of Private A E Dunn of the Border Regiment whose poem on Gallipoli was written in November 1916 and recorded the exploits of the 11th Division “who landed at Sulva Bay

They were part of Kitcheners Army
Some left children and wives
To fight for England’s freedom
And they fought for their very lives”

But for today it is the sketches of J Wilson who like one of my uncles was in the Argyle and Sutherland Regiment and a Sergeant from the 47th Canadian Infantry wounded at Vimy Ridge on January 3rd 1917.

He too has a personal connection because my great uncle was also serving with the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

And there I think is one of those simple and obvious observations that most of us will have a relative who served either in the armed forces, the Red Cross or another of the voluntary organisations during that conflict.

It is luck that this book has survived but also a tribute to David Harrop who acquired it and has kindly lent it to me so that some of the stories of those who filled its pages can be researched and told.

And soon after this was posted I recieved a message from a fellow Canadian researcher who had gone looking for the young soldier from the 47th Canadian Infantry.

Barb Torres discovered that he had enlisted in 1915, was 30 years old, from Vancouver and because the records of men from Canada who fought in the Great War are intact it will be possible to uncover his full military record.*

Now apart from the excitement of taking the story one step further it points yet again to that degree of co-operation between researchers and historians which advances our common knowledge.

I rather think Ms Wattis would be pleased and endorses her comments on the opening page of the autograph book, "When the leaves of this Book are yellow with age and the fingers  are still that have wrote on this page, those sweet to remember the dear ones of old whose friendship you prize more than silver or gold." 

Picture; St John’s Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham Cheltenham Chronicle and Gloucestershire Graphic July 31 1915, courtesy of Cheltenham Local & Family History Library, cheltlocalstudies@gloucestershire.gov.uk and pages from Blighty, the autograph book of the men recovering in the hospital, from the collection of David Harrop and the Attestation Paper, courtesy of Library and Archives Canada,

With additional research from Barb Torres

*Library and Archives Canada,
http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/first-world-war-1914-1918-cef/Pages/image.aspx?Image=286018a&URLjpg=http%3A%2F%2Fdata2.archives.ca%2Fcef%2Fgpc002%2F286018a.gif&Ecopy=286018a

And a thank you to Cheltenham Local & Family History Library, cheltlocalstudies@gloucestershire.gov.uk

Making Christmas a good one ……… in Rusholme with the Red Cross …. December 1918

The scene in this picture postcard will have been replicated across the country in Red Cross hospitals during the four years of the Great War.

This was the Red Cross Hospital in Rusholme in December 1918.

It was and is again a school, but for three years from 1915 it was one of the hospitals under the umbrella of the 2nd General Western Hospital.

I have written extensively about Red Cross Hospitals during the war and in particular those in Manchester, so I shall leave it at that.*

Other than to say this is another picture postcard plundered from the collection of David Harrop.

Location; Rusholme

Pictures; “Christmas tree given to the soldiers, December 1918” 1918, from the collection of David Harrop, and Heald Place School, Rusholme, 2023, courtesy of Goggle Maps.

*Red Cross Hospitals, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Red%20Cross%20Hospitals

A Sunday School …. Red Cross Nurses …. and the Edge

Last night proved to be an entertaining evening down at the Edge as we watched “Tickle your fancy host a night of exciting turns with something for everyone”.

The Edge and a heap of flowers, 2023

These included Doolally the comedy singing act who compèred the night with their usual mix of comedy, and topical songs, and in between there was a folk group, a poet and a musician along with a comic and actor.

And in the interval, I reflected on the Edge Theatre, its story and the bigger history of the building it occupies.

The Edge on Manchester Road, 2023

The Edge opened in 2011 and remains “Manchester’s Theatre for Participation. Our beautiful venue has entertained, captivated and enthralled audiences with some of the best small scale touring theatre in the country, alongside our own productions made by our wonderful in-house creatives.

Over the years we’ve worked with hundreds of fantastic actors and musicians; many are professional, some have learning disabilities, some have experience of homelessness, some are from our local community and all of them are brilliant!

As theatre makers we delight in creating shows which reflect the world that we live in, even if we’ve set them on the moon. They’re honest, relevant and always full of hope.

As a Manchester Cultural Partner we play a vital role in the cultural offer of the city. As leaders in participation we provide a range of exciting opportunities for people to be creative. At The Edge you can Act, Sing, Dance, play the Ukulele, Write, Paint, Draw or just be. Our café is known as one of the most friendly and welcoming in Chorlton!*

For at least eight of those years it is the final destination for the Library sponsored history walks which are part of Chorlton Book Festival.

And at the end of the walk through Chorlton’s past, Jenine, Dom and their team have offered up a much-needed light meal in the Dressing Room Café.

All of which leads me on to the building which was opened in the 1880s and was the Sunday School for the Methodist Church which was built a decade earlier.

"Wounded Soldiers of the Wesleyan School Hospital Xmas 1917”, 2013

During the Great War the Sunday School was handed over to the Red Cross as a centre for servicemen recovering from wounds, ailments and infections, and was one of three so far identified in Chorlton. The others were the McLaren Baptist Church Sunday School on Edge Lane and a private residence on Wilbraham Road.**

As yet I don’t have any pictures of the nurses, or their patients, but we do have a silver cup, which carries the inscription “Presented to the Wesleyan Church by the Wounded Soldiers of the Wesleyan School Hospital Xmas 1917”, along with a letter sent by a soldier to the children of St Clement’s Sunday School thanking them for the gift of a pillow.

Chorlton Operatic Society, 1920

And in the interval of the show last night I wandered through the corridors and pondered on that period in the story of the building, which with the end of the Great War was soon forgotten.

Less likely to be lost from memory  is the theatre which was built by the Methodists in the upper hall of the Sunday School.  From memory I think it dates from the 1950s or possibly two decades earlier and was still there when the Edge opened.  But by then it was in a poor state and no longer really fit for purpose.

That said it might have hosted performances by our own Chorlton Operatic Society which was active from 1907 through to the mid 1930s, and offers up that sense of historic continuity which links the Sunday School, a heap of Red Cross Nurses …. and the Edge.

Location; The Edge, Chorlton

Pictures; the Edge, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, picture of the silver cup, 2013, courtesy of Philip Lloyd and the programe of the Chorlton Operatic Society April 1920, donated anonymously.

*The Edge, https://www.edgetheatre.co.uk/

** Red Cross Hospital, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Red%20Cross%20Hospitals

***Chorlton Operatic Society, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=Chorlton+Operatic+Society

Sunshine at the Edge, 2023

Chorlton in two World Wars

Celebrating peace on Halstead Avenue, 1945

“Tonight I will go to sleep knowing that everyone I love will be safe.”

Even now that one line entry in a diary has a profound effect on me.

It was written in the late evening of May 8th 1945, at the end of the first day of peace in Europe.*

For some it had been a riotous night of fun, dancing and abandonment, for others a time of quiet reflection on the cost of six years of a hard war.

I don’t know what my parents and grandparents did on that night.  Nana I expect spent some of it thinking of her son who was buried in a cemetery in Thailand and must also have wondered what her native Germany would be like.

She had been born in Cologne a city which like so many was now a desert of rubble, wrecked streets and shattered lives.

Granddad no doubt was in a pub while mum and dad would have been celebrating in their different ways.

It is of course an event fast fading from living memory and will soon join the experiences of those who lived through the Great War as a piece of history only now visited through the films, books, memorials and personal accounts of that earlier conflict.

And our Red Cross Hospitals have done just that but between 1914-18 there were two of them  here in Chorlton operating from the Baptist and the Methodist Sunday Schools and others in Whalley Range.

Silver cup presented by recovering wounded soldiers  1917

Many local people supported them and hundreds of wounded soldiers spent time recovering from battlefield wounds and diseases caught while in action.

We have the names of some who worked in the hospitals, letters written by the troops and this silver cup.

The inscription reads, Presented to the Wesleyan Church by the Wounded Soldiers of the Wesleyan School Hospital Xmas 1917.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Victory street party, Halstead Avenue, courtesy of Tom Turner from the Lloyd collection, and the silver cup from a picture in the collection of Philip Lloyd

*Of course it would be another four months before Japan surrendered and the fighting was truly over.