Some more memories from David:
"I remember being allowed to work with two other patients on the hospital radio service (D.J.ing with huge BBC-like equipment) down in the basement.(Next to redundant X-Ray machines destined for the third world, I was told.)
The basement was also the venue for the hospital staff giving the patients a special show before Xmas (I remember their rendition of "Just one more cigarette" vividly).
I also remember befriending a number of sheep held in the field adjoining the hospital who's purpose there was, apparently, for scientific research."
Comment
i can remember that hospital so well i remember small animals rabbits and a goat
i was there about 4 months 1952 and 1957 about 6 months -Carol
Monday, 23 February 2009
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Councillor Anthony Ernest - Sully
I am grateful to Councillor Anthony Ernest for supplying the following information:
"Sully Hospital is now a massive new apartments development, utilising all the existing 1936 buildings plus more. It is of course Listed.
The Friends of Sully Hospital nationalarchives published a booklet some years ago to mark its half century, and I am pretty sure that I donated a copy of that booklet to the Glamorgan County Archives office in Cardiff last year. You could e-mail them for confirmation that it is in the "Ernest Papers of Penarth" entry.
The apartments have been developed by a Cheltenham based company by the name of Galliard, and you will find them on the web. You can currently rent one brand new !
My own father ended his days at Sully Hospital in 1991, so I have a certain interest.
Later, of course, there was a masssive campaign by my constituents to stop it becoming a Holding Camp for Refugees under plans by HM Government. (see BBC website), which were eventually rejected.
Kind regards,
Anthony Ernest (County Cllr.]"
"Sully Hospital is now a massive new apartments development, utilising all the existing 1936 buildings plus more. It is of course Listed.
The Friends of Sully Hospital nationalarchives published a booklet some years ago to mark its half century, and I am pretty sure that I donated a copy of that booklet to the Glamorgan County Archives office in Cardiff last year. You could e-mail them for confirmation that it is in the "Ernest Papers of Penarth" entry.
The apartments have been developed by a Cheltenham based company by the name of Galliard, and you will find them on the web. You can currently rent one brand new !
My own father ended his days at Sully Hospital in 1991, so I have a certain interest.
Later, of course, there was a masssive campaign by my constituents to stop it becoming a Holding Camp for Refugees under plans by HM Government. (see BBC website), which were eventually rejected.
Kind regards,
Anthony Ernest (County Cllr.]"
Friday, 13 February 2009
David Roberts- ex-patient
David Roberts emailed me to say:
" At the age of 19, I spent 6 excellent months at Sully with a "shadow" on the lung.
Initially, in line with your experience, I felt a dread of what I was about to experience. (My dread and my mother's shame when the house was fumigated on the basis that people might consider me to have been neglected, despite being the most well fed and cared for lad in the village).
After a few days, an "hotel" experience began, once I had come to terms with the prospects of 6 months confinement.
Quickly, "confinement" became a relative term and, along with two other new friends, trecked regularly along the rocks to enjoy a few pints at the Sully Arms.
We always used the bar area, presuming any staff from the hospital would more likely choose the lounge.
Other regular trips in the afternoon (post stretmosin injections), were undertaken to Barry High Street and the Docks. On one occasion we were driven to make a quick exit from a shop in the High Street on encountering the "battle axe" Sister England. (The same Sister that banned me using a short dressing gown on the basis of it being a smoking jacket.)
All in all, it was a wonderful experience and a productive one too. The Friends of Sully funded a Book Keeping correspondance course which later proved invaluable in business and, following a period of boredom, an arrangement was made for me to work in the records department on a part time basis. (Try that today under the Data Protection Act!."
" At the age of 19, I spent 6 excellent months at Sully with a "shadow" on the lung.
Initially, in line with your experience, I felt a dread of what I was about to experience. (My dread and my mother's shame when the house was fumigated on the basis that people might consider me to have been neglected, despite being the most well fed and cared for lad in the village).
After a few days, an "hotel" experience began, once I had come to terms with the prospects of 6 months confinement.
Quickly, "confinement" became a relative term and, along with two other new friends, trecked regularly along the rocks to enjoy a few pints at the Sully Arms.
We always used the bar area, presuming any staff from the hospital would more likely choose the lounge.
Other regular trips in the afternoon (post stretmosin injections), were undertaken to Barry High Street and the Docks. On one occasion we were driven to make a quick exit from a shop in the High Street on encountering the "battle axe" Sister England. (The same Sister that banned me using a short dressing gown on the basis of it being a smoking jacket.)
All in all, it was a wonderful experience and a productive one too. The Friends of Sully funded a Book Keeping correspondance course which later proved invaluable in business and, following a period of boredom, an arrangement was made for me to work in the records department on a part time basis. (Try that today under the Data Protection Act!."
Monday, 9 February 2009
We have all got our memories of Sully. I have just posted this account on the BBC Southeastwales web-site in the hope of stimulating interest in this project..
You can view it at:
Sully hospital
Sully. The word conjures up many meanings - depending on your age. If you are young today it represents a luxury upmarket apartment block overlooking the sea, somewhere you aspire to live in.
"But those of us with older memories, going back 50 years and more, remember it for what it was originally built for in 1936 - a state of the art model hospital for TB patients.
"I was one of those, a teenager in 1960, sent to Sully and I remember the fear and dread it cast in my mind. Having as a child spent four years incarcerated in Craig-y-nos Castle - the children's TB sanatorium at the top of the Swansea valley, former home of opera diva Adelina Patti - we had lived in fear of Sully.
"It was where they sent you to die. It was where you went to have 'the operation'.
"So the news that I was being sent to Sully - instead of teachers training college in Bristol for I was in the Sixth-form at St Michael's convent, Abergavenny - plunged me into a state of total despair.
"For in the weeks waiting for a place in Sully I slept with a bottle of aspirins beside my bed. I looked at them longingly each night. My world had been destroyed. Again. Should I or shouldn't I?
"I'm glad I didn't. Within hours of arriving in Sully my fears dissipated.
Dazzling
"The sheer dazzling brightness and warmth of the place lifted my spirits immediately; so bright was it that I found myself blinking unable to believe it. And the view from the second floor overlooking the sea was breathtakingly beautiful. Immediately I felt better.
"I had left behind a lonely, cold damp farmhouse outside Crickhowell. Now I was in a ward that bustling with life. And it was warm.
"Gone were the old sanatorium ways of treating TB with its emphasis on isolation and coldness with visitors once a month. Instead they were replaced with drugs, warmth and weekly visitors.
"I was to remain there for six months. And it remained a pivotal moment in my life, one that changed the course of my life for the better.
"But how did other people fare? What memories do others have? I have just finished a book on The Children of Craig-y-Nos - co-authored withDr Carole Reeves of The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine University College London - and it got me thinking about Sully.
"Has anything been written about our stories, our memories of time spent there? Nothing so far as I can find.
"So I am beginning the search for other people who may have spent time there, or had relatives who were there, with stories to tell.
"My story is written. Now I would like to hear other people's experiences with a view to publishing it either on the web, or if we have sufficient interest, as a print on demand book."
You can view it at:
Sully hospital
Sully. The word conjures up many meanings - depending on your age. If you are young today it represents a luxury upmarket apartment block overlooking the sea, somewhere you aspire to live in.
"But those of us with older memories, going back 50 years and more, remember it for what it was originally built for in 1936 - a state of the art model hospital for TB patients.
"I was one of those, a teenager in 1960, sent to Sully and I remember the fear and dread it cast in my mind. Having as a child spent four years incarcerated in Craig-y-nos Castle - the children's TB sanatorium at the top of the Swansea valley, former home of opera diva Adelina Patti - we had lived in fear of Sully.
"It was where they sent you to die. It was where you went to have 'the operation'.
"So the news that I was being sent to Sully - instead of teachers training college in Bristol for I was in the Sixth-form at St Michael's convent, Abergavenny - plunged me into a state of total despair.
"For in the weeks waiting for a place in Sully I slept with a bottle of aspirins beside my bed. I looked at them longingly each night. My world had been destroyed. Again. Should I or shouldn't I?
"I'm glad I didn't. Within hours of arriving in Sully my fears dissipated.
Dazzling
"The sheer dazzling brightness and warmth of the place lifted my spirits immediately; so bright was it that I found myself blinking unable to believe it. And the view from the second floor overlooking the sea was breathtakingly beautiful. Immediately I felt better.
"I had left behind a lonely, cold damp farmhouse outside Crickhowell. Now I was in a ward that bustling with life. And it was warm.
"Gone were the old sanatorium ways of treating TB with its emphasis on isolation and coldness with visitors once a month. Instead they were replaced with drugs, warmth and weekly visitors.
"I was to remain there for six months. And it remained a pivotal moment in my life, one that changed the course of my life for the better.
"But how did other people fare? What memories do others have? I have just finished a book on The Children of Craig-y-Nos - co-authored withDr Carole Reeves of The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine University College London - and it got me thinking about Sully.
"Has anything been written about our stories, our memories of time spent there? Nothing so far as I can find.
"So I am beginning the search for other people who may have spent time there, or had relatives who were there, with stories to tell.
"My story is written. Now I would like to hear other people's experiences with a view to publishing it either on the web, or if we have sufficient interest, as a print on demand book."
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