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 HOSPITAL HISTORIES Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre In 1872 the Wingfield Convalescent Home was opened on the site now occupied by the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre. It was funded by public donations, principally £1,545 from Mrs. Hannah Wingfield, who did not live to see the project completed. The Home was intended primarily for patients discharged from the Radcliffe Infirmary and this was its main use, but paying patients were admitted when space was available. There were generally five or six patients at any one time, most of whom stayed for about a fortnight. The Home was extended in 1903 and for a few years after this some space was given over to consumptive cases. At the outbreak of the First World War the Committee offered the Home for war use and it became an auxiliary hospital to the Third Southern General Hospital. During the war wooden huts were built in the grounds, including the erection of orthopaedic workships. One of those who treated patients on the site was G.R.G. Girdlestone, who was to become the first British Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery in 1937. After the war the hospital was used for the orthopaedic treatment of war pensioners, with one ward reserved for the care of children. In 1921 the home officially became an orthopaedic hospital.
Open air treatment in huts By 1924 the buildings had been improved and the Wingfield was an Open Air Hospital, with 125 beds and three private wards. However, much of the work was still carried out in huts. A donation of some £70,000 from William Morris (later Lord Nuffield) made the rebuilding of the hospital possible in 1930 and it was officially opened as the Wingfield-Morris Orthopaedic Hospital by the Prince of Wales in 1933.
G.R. Girdlestone at a Wingfield fête in the 1930s During the Second World War the hospital was used by the military authorities again. It became part of the NHS in 1948 and it was re-named the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in 1950. Between 1948 and 1974 it was controlled first by the Wingfield-Morrls Hospital Management Committee and then by the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre Hospital Management Committee. In 1974 it passed to Oxfordshire Area Health Authority (Teaching) and then, in 1982, to Oxfordshire Health Authority. It became the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre NHS Trust on 1st April 1991. See also: |
