Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton

The Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton was an acute general hospital in the All Saints inner city area of Wolverhampton.

Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton
Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust
The Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton
Location in West Midlands
Geography
Location	Wolverhampton, West Midlands, England, United Kingdom
Coordinates	52.58128°N 2.12053°W / 52.58128; -2.12053
Organisation
Care system	Public NHS
Type	Acute general hospital
History
Opened	1846
Closed	1997
Links
Lists	Hospitals in England

History

The hospital was designed by Edward Banks in the classical style and built between 1846 and 1849 on land acquired from the Henry Vane, 2nd Duke of Cleveland.^[1] It was opened as the South Staffordshire Hospital but became the Wolverhampton and Staffordshire General Hospital in the second half of the 19th century.^[1] The internal layout rapidly became outdated when the pavilion system, where patients were separated by type of illness, was introduced at new hospitals in 1852.^[2] Additions included a new wing for in-patients as well as a new block for out-patients in 1872, a fever ward in 1873, a medical library in 1877, an additional two-storey in-patient wing in 1912 and the vast King Edward VII Memorial Wing in 1923.^[1] It was renamed the Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton in December 1928.^[1] A further block of in-patient wards was completed in the late 1930s.^[1]

The hospital closed in June 1997 with services being transferred to New Cross Hospital; the site was acquired for retail development by Tesco in 2001, but the development stalled in January 2015^[3] and the site was later sold on to the Homes and Communities Agency for residential development in March 2016.^[4]

Notable staff

• Hannath, Henrietta, Matron (1864–1939).^[5] Matron of the Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton from 1906–1923.^[6][5] Hannath trained at King's College Hospital, London and worked at The London Hospital under Eva Luckes as a Home Sister, and also taught Sick Cookery to the nursing staff.^[6] During the First World War Hannath was posted as Matron of the 5th Northern General Hospital, Leicester, and returned to Wolverhampton in 1919.^[5] Hannath received her RRC in 1917, and was awarded a bar in 1920.^[7] Hannath retired as Matron in the Territorial Army Nursing Service in 1923.^[8] She was a founder member of the College of Nursing, the forerunner to the Royal College of Nursing.^[5]

References

1. Fox, Neil. "The History of The Royal Hospital". History website. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
2. "Wolverhampton hospital that was built three years too soon". Black Country Bugle. 20 August 2014. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
3. "Tesco pulls out of Wolverhampton Royal Hospital store plan". Express and Star. 8 January 2015. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
4. "Wolverhampton Royal Hospital site development: Major step forward as plan for 150 homes goes in". Express and Star. 16 September 2016. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
5. "Obituary, Miss Henrietta Hannath RRC". Nursing Times. 35 (1762): 145. 4 February 1939 – via Gale Primary Sources.
6. Rogers, Sarah (2022). 'A Maker of Matrons'? A study of Eva Lückes’s influence on a generation of nurse leaders:1880–1919' (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Huddersfield, April 2022)
7. "Honours For Nurses". The British Journal of Nursing. 65 (1701): 259. 6 November 1920 – via Gale Primary Sources.
8. "Resignations". The Nursing Record. 70 (1825): 191. 24 March 1923 – via Gale Primary Sources.