Royal Flying Corps Hospital
Shirley House, Shirley Park Golf Course, Surrey CR9 7AT
Medical dates:
Medical character:
Convalescent (military)
In 1916 the company owning the Shirley Park Golf Course, of which Mr D.G. Collins was Chairman, briefly lent its Clubhouse to the British Red Cross for use as an auxiliary military hospital. The Clubhouse of the Golf Course, which had opened in 1914, had once been Shirley House, the country seat of Lord Eldon (1805-1854).
The Auxiliary Hospital for Officers opened on 9th January 1916 and closed on 10th April the same year.In 1917 the Clubhouse once again became an auxiliary hospital, this time for officers of the Royal Flying Corps.
The Croydon Borough Electricity Committee agreed to provide electricity free of charge to the Hospital.
It closed in 1918.
Present status (November 2012)
After the war Shirley House was enlarged and became the Shirley Park Hotel.
Trinity School bought the building in the 1960s. It has been demolished and a new school built adjacent to the site.
The site of the Hospital is now an open space (left) just at the south of the Trinity School (right), opened in 1965.
(Authors unstated) 1921 Reports by the Joint War Committee and the Joint War Finance Committee of the British Red Cross and the Order of St John of Jerusalem in England on Voluntary Aid rendered to the Sick and Wounded at Home and Abroad and to Prisoners of War, 1914-1919. London, HMSO. (Reprinted in facsimile 2009. The Naval and Military Press Ltd in association with the Imperial War Museum.)
Moore HK (ed) 1920 Croydon and the Great War; the Official History of the War Work of the Borough and its Citizens from 1914 to 1919, together with the Croydon Roll of Honour. Corporation of Croydon.
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