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World War One At HomeWhen Nursing Came Home

Home Front hospitals sprang up to cope with the overwhelming numbers of injured soldiers & wounded civilians

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Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh treated shell shock victims including poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon

Photo shows staff & patients of the Hospital. Courtesy of Edinburgh Napier University

  • Cheltenham Racecourse became a Voluntary Aid (VA) Hospital. Thousands had been treated in the makeshift wards by the war's end
  • Ambulance trains, such as this Great Western Railway hospital train,played a vital role in the administration of effective care
  • Brighton's Royal Pavilion estate was used as a military hospital for wounded Indian soldiers. There were 724 available beds
  • Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh treated shell shock victims including poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon
  • A nurse and two orderlies dressing a patient's wounds at the Endell Street Military Hospital
  • The First Great Eastern, Cambridge. A hutted hospital built on cricket pitches with its own central heating system
  • Recuperation, Saffron Walden Voluntary Aid Hospital. 'Staff work under considerable difficulties, which are bravely surmounted'
  • Injured soldiers in the grounds of the University of Birmingham. Known as the Southern General, over 130K were admitted
  • Chiseldon Camp in Wiltshire treated soldiers with VD. Known as the Bad Boys' Camp, there were over 1K beds by the war's end.
  • Gournay Court, in Somerset, opened as a hospital in 1915. Over 1,400 soldiers were treated here during WW1, without one death
  • The first convoy of injuries arrive at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading. Leonard Joyce was a pioneering surgeon here.
  • A nurse at the Endell Street Military Hospital, the only hospital to be staffed entirely by women
  • Burton Town Hall Infirmary. The conversion of the Town Hall into a hospital was carried out by a local branch of the Red Cross.
  • Staff of the Endell Street Military Hospital in London, 1916.

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