Steve Dorkings -retired biomedical scientist - Sully

Just when I think I am going to give up on trying to put together the Sully story something happens to encourage me to persevere.
Like this email I received from a former scientist who trained at Sully.

Let Steven tell it in his own words:
" I started my career as a Junior Medical Laboratory Technician in Pathology, training to diagnose disease by laboratory methods at Sully Hospital. (The profession is now known as Biomedical Scientists a branch of the many little recognised Healthcare Scientists).

The Pathology department was then quite small unlike the modern automated laboratories of today.

I was there from 1968 to c.1972. I was taught everything from collecting blood on the wards for Haematology to diagnosing TB from sputum examination. There were several trainees, pathology then just on the verge of great breakthroughs, nothing was automated, and made very good friends.

I met and married my wife there, she was a junior nurse who later went onto be involved in ECG. It was a great place to work with the staff all knowing each other by first names from the coal boiler stoker “Ginger” to the hospital superintendant Dr “Bill” Foreman. I was there when heart valve replacement and perfusion was being pioneered. On call for Biochemistry I had to monitor the Na, K and blood gasses of such patients from table to ITU, sometimes on the hour every hour all afternoon and night. In Haematology we had to perform prothrombin and clotting times and cross match blood. In those days X matching 20 pints of blood for a open heart patient through wasnt a bad day!


Despite individual patient sad fortunes it was a great place to work and the staff had a terrific camaraderie and genuinely cared for the patients. Sully put me on a career which I pursued across Wales, Scotland and England contributing to many pathology laboratories in the NHS. I have just retired after 42 years as a biomedical scientist specialising in medical microbiology and can honestly say the years spent at Sully were the best years of my career and equipped me with a passion for my subject, the NHS, its staff and most importantly, the patient. I learnt much more than just the science. Thank you Sully Hospital.
Steve Dorkings CSi, FIBMS, Cert.NHS Man."


And thank you Steve for sharing your story with us.

Before the advent of high tech laboratories guiea pigs were used. If they were lived you knew you were cured.

Jenny Hicks - ex patient

Just when I thought I would have to abandon this project through lack of ex patients coming forward I get a phone call this morning from Jenny Hicks.

She has had a long association with Sully starting with having her lung out as a 12 year old in 1962. She suffers from non cystic fibrosis and a rare skin disease called Steven-johnson syndrome.

The latter condition was brought on as a six year old when she had a severe reaction to antibiotics.

Despite over 50 years of ill health and daily pain she is remarkably cheerful, yet another example of the power of the human spirit often in the face of great adversity.

Her memories of Sully are vivid and fond.
" I still dream of the place."
Jenny has agreed to do a full scale interview which I hope to do later this week.

She lives in Cowbridge. " The doctors told me I would never work or have children. I defied them. I did both."

She is a survivor and I look forward to hearing more of her story."

Facebook- Sully

We have a discussion group on Facebook and so far a few ex patients have turned up. Mostly though it is ex staff and relatives of ex staff including one retired nurse who is now living in one of the Sully apartments!

What is noticeable though is that everyone speaks very highly of the days when it was a hospital, very much at the cutting edge of medicine with pioneering work in the treatment and management of TB then of heart surgery.

Sully and Craig-y-nos

Craig-y-nos and Sully – punishment regimes




Craig-y-nos Castle, former children's TB sanatorium and home of opera diva Adelina Patti


Sully hospital

Philip Cox recalls the different punishment regimes he experienced as a child patient in both Craig-y-nos and Sully during the 1950s.


“In Craig-y-nos they tied you to the bed. In Sully if you got out of bed and you weren’t supposed to, then they took your pyjamas trousers off you. I hated that!”

He went into Craig-y-nos in 1953 as a three and a half year old and later transferred to Sully for his lung operation.

He was amazed to discover the blogs the other day while trawling through the internet.

“ I couldn’t believe my eyes. Any minute I expected to come across a photo of myself!”

Now he has sent away for a copy of the book, “The Children of Craig-y-nos” from Amazon.

Despite his poor start in life he went on to become a rugby champion in school and won numerous medals for sport including throwing the javelin.

Philip lives in Pontypool with his family.

Changed times: to-day Craig-y-nos Castle is a hotel specialising in weddings and Sully has been converted into upmarket apartments.

Stephen Parry - 1964- child heart patient

I have just received this email from Stephen Parry who was in Sully as a child:

"I've had a look at the blogs and it brought back memories.

I remember the long trek to the hospital with my mother from my home in Cwmbran, which involved about three buses as we didn't have a car. And the long walk past a plastics or chemical factory which we had to take when we missed the bus that dropped off outside the hospital. I can still smell that factory now.

As I already mentioned I was ten years old and didn't understand how seriously ill I was or indeed how ill the other children on the ward were that became my friends. It wasn't until many years later that I was told that most of them had died either in hospital or soon after discharge.

Of course heart surgery was very much in it's infancy at the time and I was something of a pioneer I suppose. My sister went on to become a nurse and discovered some time later that I was one of the first patients to use the heart lung machine.

My parents stayed in the hospital accommodation when I had the operation. It was in June 1964 ( I can't remember the exact date ), and I remember coming round after the operation in the post op room overlooking the sea. It was a moment I will never forget. It was a beautiful summer morning and the sun was dancing on the water. There were yachts as well I recall. My parents were at my side and my mother burst into tears on seeing the aftermath of the surgery.

I suppose it couldn't have been a pretty sight with stitches and draining tubes exiting my body. The surgeon Mr Harley told me later I had 63 stitches just one short of the year.

I can't remember exactly how long I stayed at Sully, but I think it was about 3 months. Then shortly after discharge it was noticed that my right leg was continually swollen and I was rushed back in with a suspected DVT. This was confirmed and unfortunately I still have it today but thankfully it has caused me few problems.

I have only returned to see the hospital once since my time there and that was just to stop and view it from outside about thirty years ago.
I would love to visit it again and walk around it but I suppose that would not be possible now.

In 2004, the 40th anniversary of my stay there I did write to a local newspaper to ask if anyone had stayed or knew anyone who had been there during my time there but I didn't get any replies. I would love to meet someone who was a heart patient there in that summer of 1964, or indeed any of the nursing staff."

Where are all the ex-Sully patients? like Stephen I feel they must be out there somewhere if only we could contact them to hear their stories. - Ann

Sully- Dr Len West

I got a phone call today from Rosie West, daughter of New Zealand doctor Len West, who was at Sully from 1948 until his death in 1970 from lung cancer.
He was only 59 years of age.

Says Rosie:" Like so many doctors of that time he smoked."

She recalls going to Sully on Saturdays while her father attended to work. "I also remember attending some children's parties."

Rosie heard about my blog from her Australian cousins who are researching their family history and they stumbled across it.


Other doctors she recalls are Dr Foreman, the Australian medical superintendent and Dilwyn Thomas the surgeon.

Rosie has some photos of her father's time at Sully and she is going to send them to me.

Friends of Sully Hospital - 50th anniversary

Ann inside the show flat one of the former 8 bedded wards.



On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Sully hospital in 1986 a booklet was published to commemorate the event.

I have got a copy of the booklet and it contains some interesting social and medical facts.

Sully was the last of the hospitals to be built for TB patients and it was specifically a hospital not a sanatorium. The first patients were all in an advanced stage of the disease and the deaths were unfortunately large.
In other cases, before the arrival of drugs, many patients were kept in for two to three years.

It had 300 beds and is situated on the coast between Sully and Penarth about seven miles from Cardiff facing the Somerset and North Devon coast.

The building was devised with the idea of forming traps for "sun heated air" and to provide shelter not only from the south-west gale but from the extreme heat of the afternoon sun.

Incidentally this shape has resulted in a considerable economy since it not only reduces the length of windows but also the overall lengths of the buildings.



The ward blocks are in a double "V" formation facing the sea, three storeys high and each floor accommodated one hundred patients.

In all there were six ward units each containing fifty beds

Each ward unit contained two eight bedded wards, 6 four bedded wards and ten single rooms.

Sully contained many interesting fitments well ahead of its time like built in wardrobes bed head-lights, dish washing machines , refrigerators and a steam heated kettle in each ward kitchen.

Fireplaces were provided in day rooms in addition to the central heating throughout the building.
Yet another example of how Sully, the "model hospital" differed from the traditional TB sanatorium!