Warren Lewis- childhood photos from Sully hospital

Warren Lewis has sent me some photos of his time in Sully hospital.

He belongs to both the Sully Facebook and the Tetralogy group.

Says Warren:

" I was in Sully in 1971, when I was 7 years old.

I was born with Fallots Tetralogy in 1964. I then had the operation in 1971 in Sully.

I was on Morgannwg ward and I still have a present the nurses gave me when I was there.

The present was a poster of Donald Duck and all the staff had signed it."


Thank you Warren for sharing these memories with us.

Howard Richards -child patient

I got a phone call this afternoon from Howard Richards who had a heart operation as a ten year old in Sully hospital.

He says:" My mother kept saying that there was something wrong me and eventually a surgeon confirmed it. I had a heart murmur."
He was to become one of the first children ever to be operated on using the new heart-lung machine.

I have asked Howard to write his own account of his memories which he says are still "very vivid".



Now in his early 60's and recently retired he still has his hospital appointment book and he would over to make contact with the surgeon who saved his life. His parents were told that he would be dead by the time he was 13 or 14 and if he did have the operation then there was only a slender chance that he would survive.


What a dreadful decision for his parents to be faced with! Well, they took the chance and Howard survived and went on to lead a very healthy life.

Now he would like to say a big "thank you" to that surgeon who saved his life.

Seagulls in the wards at Sully

Steve Dorkings tells the story:

"My father was a patient at Sully in the early 60's.

I was about 9 years old and rarely allowed in to visit him (over 13's only). Despite serious illness over many months he still recounts happy times as a patient, including coaxing the seagulls into the ward from the balcony, much to sisters annoyance!"

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.