Rowley Bristow Orthopaedic Hospital 1970

A Memory of Pyrford.

I became a Student Nurse, training for the Orthopaedic Nursing Certificate at The Rowley Bristow Orthopaedic Hospital, on the day before my 17th birthday in January 1970.
The hospital was divided into two main buildings, St Nicholas's Home and St Martin's Home. This photograph shows the smaller of the two buildings, St Martin's, which is where I lived.
The main part of the first floor that you can see, was occupied by the School of Nursing. The top floor was known as the Night Nurses Corridor. The first floor of the left-hand wing was known as the Domestics Corridor, where the Domestic Staff lived, and the first floor of the right-hand wing was known as the PTS (Preliminary Training School) Corridor, where many of the Student Nurses lived. My room was the first two windows that you can see on the left, on the first floor. The room next to it was the Senior Tutors Office (The white windows). The ground floor of the left-hand wing was a ward (sorry I can't remember its name), and the ground floor of the right-hand wing was an empty ward. The main part of the ground floor that you can see were rooms for private patients. The annexe on the far right was an empty ward leading to the children's ward.
I'm sad to learn that the hospital closed in the early 1990's and that the buildings have now been pulled down and the site built on. I have many happy memories of the time that I lived and worked there.