By Wilfrid Edgecombe, M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.C.S.
The history of the Harrogate and District General
Hospital
A delayed inheritance
A notable prospective addition of £13,000 to the hospital funds
was made from the will of Mr Spier. By a ruling of the Court of
Appeal it was to be made on the death of the tenant for life, which,
as will appear later, did not occur until 1955-30 years afterwards!
Following at last on the recommendation of the memorandum in
1919, it was definitely resolved that a new hospital must be built.
There followed a long and, at times, acrimonious controversy on the
policy to be adopted: whether to build on the existing site or to
seek a new situation elsewhere. For a time the advocates of the
existing site, headed by Alderman Houle, then an active figure in
municipal affairs, held the field and accordingly a competition was
put out to architects for a new hospital in Avenue Road to hold 120
beds.
It was won by Messrs Elcock and Sutcliffe, architects, of London.
Meantime, the opponents of the scheme were by no means idle.
Persuaded as they were that to build on such a restricted site
showed a lamentable want of foresight as to the future needs and
development of Harrogate, they moved heaven and earth to get the
verdict quashed. And finally, after many meetings and much palaver,
they succeeded.
They were fortified in their views by a report on the matter by a
noted expert on hospital construction, Colonel Mackintosh. who
condemned the Belvedere site as totally inadequate.
A survey of the neighbourhood was then made to find an
alternative site. Many were considered . . . Grove House in Skipton
Road, offered for £8,000 with an area of 13 acres; a site in
Wetherby Road, now occupied by a Council School; one along Leeds
Road offered by Captain Whitworth; one on Harlow Moor beyond the
Durham Convalescent Home; and finally the present site. Here an area
of seven acres was purchased and later generously offered free by
Capt C S Greenwood, the president of the hospital.
The last was finally decided upon as being in the centre of what
was foreseen to be in the future a thickly populated area it was
then open fields, on a main road, easily accessible, serving
Harrogate and Starbeck and affording ample space for future
development.
The controversy dragged on over two years, for it was not until
1925 that the decision was finally taken to plump for the
Knaresborough Road site.
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