About the Project
“This excellent institution… In its management the utmost care is taken to secure the best professional attention both for indoor and outdoor patients, and many thousands who have participated in its benefits can attest its value.”
-- Benjamin Poole, 1870, on the Hospital at its new site on Stoney Stanton Road
The Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital served the region at its site on Stoney Stanton Road in Coventry city centre since 1867, providing a variety of services to the community, including orthopaedic surgery, and cancer screening and treatment. In 2006, along with Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital was relocated to the new University Hospital on the Walsgrave site. This consolidation and investment to create one of the first 'super hospitals' is a significant moment in the history of the NHS, and points to the changing nature of health care in the UK.
Working closely with Hospital staff, and The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, The Centre for the History of Medicine devised a programme of activity to research and celebrate the history of Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital, with special emphasis on the post-World War Two period. This activity included conducting interviews to be used in writing a history of the Hospital. These interviews were recorded, and a selection of extracts are posted on this website on the Sites of Memory pages. At the end of the project the recordings entered the oral history collections of the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum.
We also salvaged objects from the Hospital site, including artificial limbs, an operating table from the 1930s, and a number of surgical instruments. Images of the salvaged objects are also posted on the Sites of Memory pages, and the objects themselves were exhibited at ONE LAST LOOK, the public event held 5 and 6 August 2006, at the Hospital site.
Visual and performing artists were involved in the project, including a Photographer-in-Residence and a Writer-in-Residence. Working with the content of the oral history interviews, the salvaged objects, and the Hospital site itself, the artists created work about the Hospital and its history. Visit the Events pages to learn more about these activities.
