Hornbrook Auxiliary Hospital
High Street, Chislehurst, Kent BR7 5AB
Medical dates:
Medical character:
Convalescent
Two days after the Kent/66 Voluntary Aid Detachment (V.A.D.) had opened its first auxiliary military hospital - Holbrook Auxiliary Hospital - it received orders on 16th October 1914 to prepare another hospital.
Hornbrook Auxiliary Hospital opened a week later with 50 beds in Hornbrook House, a former prep school owned by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Mercy.
The Hospital was later improved, with a modern operating theatre and a sterilising unit being installed.
By 1917 both hospitals had a total of 122 beds for sick and wounded servicemen. Both were affiliated to the Ontario Military Hospital at Orpington.
The Hospital closed in August 1918.
Present status (November 2011)
The house was demolished around 1970. Its site is now a municipal car park - Hornbrook House Car Park. There is a local Red Cross centre in a small building at the back.
The municipal car park is beside the site of the Kent/66 V.A.D.'s third hospital - Hollington House Auxiliary Hospital.
Readers' comments
Wounded Belgian soldiers leaving Red Cross Hospital to see the State Opening of Parliament, Nov. 11th 1914.
Postcard courtesy of Harry Van Driessen, whose grandfather Alfred Van Driessen was nursed at the Hospital from October 1914 to March 1915.
Postcard courtesy of Harry Van Driessen, whose grandfather Alfred Van Driessen was nursed at the Hospital from October 1914 to March 1915.
(Author unstated) 1917 List of the various hospitals treating military cases in the United Kingdom. London, H.M.S.O.
(Author unstated) 1920 Kent Voluntary Aid Detachments. Report of Hospitals and Detachments 1914-1919. Bromley, self-published.
Creswick P, Pond GS, Ashton PH 1915 Kent's Care for the Wounded. London, Hodder & Stoughton.
Van Driessen R, Van Driessen-Meersschaert H and H 2023 In the footsteps of a huntsman on foot of Kemzeke, part 13 (in Flemish). d'Euzie 42 (2), 38-42.
Van Driessen R, Van Driessen-Meersschaert H and H 2023 In the footsteps of a huntsman on foot of Kemzeke, part 14 (in Flemish). d'Euzie 42 (4), 117-119.
Walker J 1979 The British Red Cross in the Bromley area 1910-1919. Bromley Local History 4, 17-23.
https://chislehurst-society.org.uk
www.kemnal-road.org.uk
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