Heatherwood Hospital 1970 to 1971

Cut-Price Bus Shelter

Sunninghill Parish Council has agreed to contribute £64 towards repairing the canopy outside The Picture House in Sunninghill High Street. A bus shelter put up by the parish council outside Heatherwood Hospital. Ascot, a few weeks ago cost more than £200.
Extract Evening Post 19/02/1970

 

League of Friends

The annual meeting of the League of Friends to Heatherwood Hospital. Ascot. will be held tonight in the social hall of the hospital.
Extract Evening Post 23/06/1970

 

Nurses face fight ,Matron

Nurses are in danger of being pushed out of hospitals therapeutic teams with treatment of patients becoming more and more complicated. But this must not be allowed to happen, said Miss Mary Powell, at Ascot yesterday.
Miss Powell, matron of Oswestry Orthopaedic Hospital and a world authority on Orthopaedic nursing. was presenting the prizes and certificates at Heatherwood Hospital's prize giving.
Miss Powell urged, the nurses to fight not only to keep their place in the therapeutic teams but to set a good example of behaviour to everyone else in hospitals.
Extract Evening Post 09/07/1970

Comment:-

 

Children

A group of children in Shelley Avenue, Bracknell. have raised £8 for Heatherwood Hospital and the local football club from a jumble sale they held outside a house in the road.
Extract Evening Post 04/09/1970

 

Mr Smith's 20,000 appeals get no reply

By Bert May
The people of Bracknell have turned a deaf ear to the appeals of arthritic sufferer Mr William Smith. For Mr Smith's appeal in the form of 20,000 leaflets to support his association to build a treatment unit for fellow sufferers at Heatherwood Hospital has not received a single reply.
Now 53-year-old Mr Smith is thinking of resigning his job as secretary of the local branch of the Arthritis and Rheumatism Research Council because of people's attitude.
At his home in Threshfield, Wildridings. Bracknell.
Mr Smith said: "It is hopeless.
People just don't want to know. Despite his illness, which has kept him off work for a year, Mr Smith helped distribute the leaflets throughout the area.
Support
They listed nine ways people could help the association, either by cash gifts or recruitment. The householders had to cross out the items they were not interested in and return the forms. But not a single form has been returned.
Mr Smith said he toured certain areas with his daughter, canvassing support. "But people were so rude to us that daughter. a normally placid person, was so angry she said she will never do it again.
And I can't blame her."
said Mr Smith. "One woman grabbed hold of the form and tore it up in front of us."
Mr Smith has also written to local factories for support.
The response has been less than £30. which leaves the association far short of its £700 target.
Said Mr Smith "I read the other day that an appeal in Reading raised £1.700 for animals. It appears that people think more of animals than they do of suffering old people and children."
Extract Evening Post 22/09/1970

 

Hospital Given an Ice Maker

Cool comfort helps children
Nurse Bridget Buckton takes another shovel full of comfort from the new, £400 ice machine donated to Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot.
Crushed ice from the machine is used in the children's ward to help children with chest complaints who have to be inside humidity tents.
It was given to the hospital by the WRVS. Money was raised from the profits of the outpatients canteen which the WRVS runs at the hospital.
The machine, which looks like a large grey juke box, can make up to 120 pounds of ice a day.
A hospital spokesman "Large said: quantities of ice are needed in the children's ward for the humidity tents.
The ice keeps the temperature cool and the air humid inside the tents."
Before the arrival of the ice making machine, the hospital had to collect large blocks of ice from the Oakleigh Animal Products Factory in South Ascot.
Next item on the list of hospital "comforts" which the WRVS hopes to provide is a telephone trolley for the new maternity wing under construction. When the wing is opened, the WRVS will also be setting up a canteen in the antenatal clinic.
Extract Evening Post 12/11/1970

Comment:- The above article was accompanied by a photo of Nurse Bridget.
Copyright prevents us from displaying the photo here.

 

Hospital starts fight for nurses

Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot, held an exhibition at Seymour House yesterday at the start of a week of fighting for more nurses at the hospital.
Pupil nurse tutor Miss Yvonne Thorne said: "We desperately need more nurses. For some obscure reason numbers coming into the profession recently have dropped considerably.
Models of young nurses in uniform and hot pants are geared to illustrate that a nurse's life can be enjoyable.
"It is not all work and no. play," said Miss Thorne. There are also photographs Heatherwood nurses enjoying a dip in the hospital: pool and relaxing in their own furnished rooms.
Rapid
Last year the hospital dealt with 32,285 out-patients, 20,012 casualties and 4,404 patients occupied the "seven wards.
The hospital wants to recruit women from their mid-teens up to the 40-age mark.
A variety of models are also on view showing different aspects of hospital work.
Miss Thorne said: "Apart from recruiting this is also a public relations exercise to familiarise new town dwellers with their hospital.
"Because we are three miles away at Ascot people in Bracknell tend to think we are tucked away in the woods."
But she pointed out it is the major hospital for the area and over the next ten years will be developed to keep pace with the rapidly expanding population of East Berkshire.
Apart from being a general. casualty and orthopaedic centre, a new maternity and gynaecological department will be opened in the autumn and a midwifery training school will be started soon after.
The training period for student nurses at the hospital is 20 months.
Extract Evening Post 02/04/1971

 

Chairman Hits at Apathy

A plea for less apathy among the membership of the League of Friends for Heatherwood Hospital. Ascot. has been made by chairman Mr John Coxwell.
It came at the annual meeting when only 21 of the 604 members turned up. had But it was reported that financially it was a good year for the league with funds increasing by £500.
Treasurer Mr Arthur Davis said the league bought geriatric chairs, additional equipment and records for the special internal record request programmes and memorial windows for the chapel.
The fete held at the hospital last month raised £760. This means the league now has almost enough money: to build two of the three day rooms it is planning for the hospital.

Extract Evening Post 25/06/1971

 

Miss Darling Has Triplets at Ascot

It is a carry on when Hattie takes charge.
Triplets were born to a film star at Heatherwood Hospital's spanking new quarter of a million pounds maternity unit at Ascot yesterday.
They were helped into the world by student nurse, Kenneth Cope because the gynaecologist. Dr Terry Scott, had accidentally been knocked unconscious by a hypodermic needle.
Luckily for Valerie Leon, who plays the part of a film star, Miss Darling, who gives birth to the triplets, the bizarre incident was not for real.
It will be seen on Britain's cinema screens next spring as part of the 23rd Carry On film, Carry On Matron.
The maternity unit is not yet open for real births.
Heatherwood was renamed Finnisham Maternity Hospital for a two-day visit by the film crew.
The ante clinic was temporarily turned into dressing and make-up rooms and the lifts between the operating theatres and wards carried the powerful arc lights and camera trolleys.
Actor Kenneth Cope, looking like an attractive nurse in his long page boy wig and suitably stuffed uniform, explained the plot: "My father Sidney James is head of a gang of crooks and he makes me dress up as a nurse to steal some birth pills to sell abroad.
Matron is, of course, Hattie Jacques who has appeared in more Carry On films that she can remember.
"This is either my 11th or 12th. But they're all good fun. Kenneth Williams, who has been in all but one of them, is playing Sir Bernard Cutting, the head surgeon. Miss Darling has triplets at Ascot.
Extract Evening Post 28/11/1971

Comment:- The above article was accompanied by a photo's of Valerie Leon in bed and a photo of Hattie Jacques in Matrons uniform.
Copyright prevents us from displaying the photo's here.

 

Hospital Beds Planned Welcomed

Windsor Rural District Council's plans committee has agreed to make no official observations-on plans to expand Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot, from 250 beds to about 800 beds.
But the chairman of the council, Councillor Jimmy Matthews, said the growth of the hospital was a real necessity for the people of the Ascot Bracknell area.
He said many patients at the moment had to go to Wexham Park Hospital in Slough which was most inconvenient.
Extract Evening Post 03/11/1971

 

Hospital Blast

Part of Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot, was plunged into darkness last night after an explosion and fire at an electricity sub-station in the hospital grounds.
No one was hurt.
Firemen from Bracknell say the exact cause of the explosion is not yet known.
It affected the hospital's casualty and general wards.
Extract Evening Post 17/11/1971

 

The Great Pill Robbery, Conceived by Sid James

Reading Show Queen 17-year- old Jill Bennett was an eye-witness to the to the great Berkshire birth pill robbery yesterday.
Thieves led by a thinly disguised Sid James were attempting to get away with the entire stock of The Pill from a hospital looking remarkably like Ascot's Heatherwood.
And the similarity is not unplanned.
Jill, of Portman Close, Bracknell. was watching the making of the latest and 23rd Carry On film, one of her prizes for winning the Show Queen title.
And the film Carry On Matron starring the usual Carry On team is based on an unauthenticated event at Heatherwood Hospital a couple of miles down the road from Jill's home.
Yesterday Jill was in time to see some of the last scenes in the film being shot at Pinewood Studios where a mock-up of Heatherwood Hospital has been created.
And there the thieves, Sid James and his partners in crime Bernard Bresslaw, Bill Maynard and Kenneth Cope, blasted the door of The Pill store to steal the entire stock to sell it abroad.
But the Carry On crooks took time off to meet Jill, currently studying for her A levels in economics, French and English at the Holt School in Wokingham.
"They were really nice." Jill said as she was later given a guided tour of the 100-acre studios, home of the James Bond films and the new Persuaders television series.
After seeing the action, Jill, who was planning to become a fashion buyer after leaving school, said wistfully: "No, I wouldn't really mind getting into films. In fact, I think I'd like to."
Extract Evening Post 18/11/1971

Comment:- The above article was accompanied by a photo of Jill Bennett having a cuddle from Kenneth Cope dressed as a nurse.
Copyright prevents us from displaying the photo's here.

 

Trolley shop

Plans are under way for the League of Friends at Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot, to join forces with the WRVS to take a trolley shop around the hospital on more than the present one day a week.
The present trolley shop is run by the WRVS who also run the out-patient canteen. Volunteers are wanted.
Extract Evening Post 02/12/1971

 

An idea to toy with..

Staff at the Road Research Laboratory in Crowthorne have been doing a little small-scale work.
They volunteered to dress dolls, make toys and give money to the Department of the Environment's Christmas Appeal.
The toys were mobile and their wheels were donated by S.Leboff (Wokingham) Ltd. And the 300-toys and dolls are pictured with Dr R.S.Millard, Laboratory Deputy Director, after he had presented them, with a cheque for £86, to Miss C.H.Henry, the Department's Chief Welfare Officer.
The toys and cash will provide Christmas presents for children in homes and hospitals all over the country, and particularly for orphans of former staff.
Local recipients will be Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot; Hart's Leap Cheshire Home, Sandhurst, and Berkshire County Council in-care Homes. Bracknell.
Extract Evening Post 08/12/1971

Comment:- The above article was accompanied by a photo of Dr R.S.Millard, Laboratory Deputy Director, after he had presented a cheque for £86, to Miss C.H.Henry, the Department's Chief Welfare Officer.
Copyright prevents us from displaying the photo here.

 

People & Places

Nurses from Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot.
are holding a dance in the hospital's social hall on January 7.
Extract Evening Post 29/12/1971

 

A Bed at The Ball

A handmade double bed will help build and equip day rooms for two at Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot.
Presented to the hospital's League of Friends by Mr B.A.Friend, of Bracknell, the bed is to be first prize in a competition at Bracknell Round Table's New Year ball at the sports stadium on Saturday.
Mr Friend, who runs the Friendly Rest custom built bed factory near Woolwich, specialises in making beds for handicapped people.
Extract Evening Post 29/12/1971