Here’s a fantastic set of Walter Bond’s memories of life as patient at the Abergele Sanitorium. It was originally posted as a comment on this blog, but I believe Walter’s pice deserves its own article. So I’m handing over here to Walter Bond:
“It has been a long long time since I was in Abergele Sanatorium, I was in their for quite some time, I am not quite sure when I went in but it was in the early 1950s, I can remember watching the Queens Coronation on TV in the hall, the patients who where allowed to walk could do so but the rest of us where pushed down to the main hall in our beds.
“Her are some of the names that I can remember and who they where.
Doctors:-
Dr Morrison. I think he was the head guy or Superintendent.
Dr Day or (Dea) This doctor was from Asia I think maybe India.
“Sister King” on ward B4? A lovely larger than life Irish female nurse who stood for no nonsense.
“Sister Bonelle”. A male sister who came I think from Malta, I seem to remember him telling stories about the war and the part that the Maltese Air Force played in it. I think there where three aircraft called Faith, Hope and Charity.
Male Nurse, Mr Smith, A rough looking chap but a nice guy.
Male Nurse, Mr Timothy.
Male Nurse, Mr Thompson a young chap who wore glasses and had an unfortunate walk that the lads in the ward made fun of, but again a nice chap.
Their was also a Staff Nurse we called “Chiefy” he was ex Royal Navy, and we all knew it, he would take charge of the floor cleaning every morning, out of our beds (all those who where allowed) push all the beds to one side, soft polish on the floor with a stick , wipe with a brush covered over with a cloth, then follow up with a twin brush electric polisher with the man himself in control.
Male Sister King, (no relation to female Sister King).
Mable Parks was the Head Teacher, she lived in a cottage just outside the hospital gates, there where tow cottages, one of them was Miss Parks and the other I think belonged to the hospital because we where sometimes taken down there for cooking lessons, absolutely fantastic we where taught how to cook all sorts of goodies and when we had finished we all sat down to eat some of what we had made, I do remember one Christmas that we cooked Christmas dinner, wonderful!.
“Mr Tomlinson was the teacher he gave us books from a trolley that he pushed from ward to ward for those who could not attend the school at the far end of the wards, one day English the next maths,and so on.
Staff Nurse Eyeball, can’t forget her with a name like that and the rumers going around the wards that she was going out with one of the patients?.
Some of the patients David Bailey. Ken Hurstfield. David Parks. Jed Winterburn.
“One last memory and the one that stays with me is the visitors from all over the North who caught a special bus from Piccadilly Station in Manchester every week to come and see their sons and daughters in North Wales.
“We lived in Bolton and my mother walked into Bolton to catch the early Sunday No 8 bus to Manchester every week, to be on the Abergele Hospital bus for 0900hrs to arrive in Abergele for around lunch time, she did this for about 6 years the that I was in Abergele Hospital, from 1951ish (I was about 8/9 years old until I was just 13 years old).
“I also left part of my right lung in North Wales, removed by the most eminent of surgeons Sir Ivor Lewis, the same one who operated on the the King. I could go on but ….”
