After speaking to a friend and I decided to check this place out as I remember going there as a child.
It is a building site and there are signs stating there is security but I didn’t see anyone and I was able to just walk onto the site with no trouble at all.
Opened July 18th 1979, the design of this hospital was based on another hospital, the Royal Herbert Hospital, Woolwich and was named for the cousin of Queen Victoria, the Duke of Cambridge, Prince George.
The hospital saw many extensions over the years, including the Louise Margaret Hospital ward in 1897 which aided many military wives & children, including my own family!
The hospital was also the first to see frontline casualties during World War I and was also the first place within the British Empire to perform plastic surgeries when a unit was created by Sir Harold Gillies in 1915 on his return from France, where he had fallen in love with facial reconstruction & learned the practise.
The hospital began to let civilians in when it saw a decline in its military obligations, though did continue to pioneer frontline supplies and portable operating theatres.
Due to a discovery of asbestos & the high costs of running the old building, The Cambridge Military Hospital closed its doors on the 2nd February 1996 & housing permission was granted in 2014, with work commencing on turning the hospital into housing.
I remember coming here when I was a child, my family were military and we lived in Aldershot, some of my friends were born there and whilst I don’t remember much, what I do was a very stark contrast to what I saw.
What I remembered was a very white place, white walls, nurses in very clean white uniforms, a very sterile smell wherever you turned and the overall air that this was a no nonsense place.
It was busy and quiet, a no running in the halls place where everything ran on a tight schedule and the nurses, though kind, had zero time for your complaints or nonsense today.
Today it was a different kind of peaceful, there was no chattering, no busy feet and whilst still beautiful, it was a decaying beauty that whilst sad to see, was still vastly superior to the housing estate that surrounds it.
I am glad I went today, that I got to go inside and explore places I wasn’t allowed to go, run in the hallways and just see a stunning building that will be lost soon, the kind of place they don’t make anymore.
It is a building site and there are signs stating there is security but I didn’t see anyone and I was able to just walk onto the site with no trouble at all.
Opened July 18th 1979, the design of this hospital was based on another hospital, the Royal Herbert Hospital, Woolwich and was named for the cousin of Queen Victoria, the Duke of Cambridge, Prince George.
The hospital saw many extensions over the years, including the Louise Margaret Hospital ward in 1897 which aided many military wives & children, including my own family!
The hospital was also the first to see frontline casualties during World War I and was also the first place within the British Empire to perform plastic surgeries when a unit was created by Sir Harold Gillies in 1915 on his return from France, where he had fallen in love with facial reconstruction & learned the practise.
The hospital began to let civilians in when it saw a decline in its military obligations, though did continue to pioneer frontline supplies and portable operating theatres.
Due to a discovery of asbestos & the high costs of running the old building, The Cambridge Military Hospital closed its doors on the 2nd February 1996 & housing permission was granted in 2014, with work commencing on turning the hospital into housing.
What I remembered was a very white place, white walls, nurses in very clean white uniforms, a very sterile smell wherever you turned and the overall air that this was a no nonsense place.
Today it was a different kind of peaceful, there was no chattering, no busy feet and whilst still beautiful, it was a decaying beauty that whilst sad to see, was still vastly superior to the housing estate that surrounds it.
I am glad I went today, that I got to go inside and explore places I wasn’t allowed to go, run in the hallways and just see a stunning building that will be lost soon, the kind of place they don’t make anymore.
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