Lowestoft Hospital

In many ways, this is a sorry sight - both in terms of seeing such a fine building boarded up and also of considering how it ministered to the Lowestoft area’s medical needs for just over 130 years.

The writer’s younger son underwent an appendectomy there in 1978, not long before his fourth birthday, and it is still possible to reach back into the memory-bank and see him out on the balcony with some of the other young patients, enjoying the afternoon sunshine, as my wife and I walked from the car park to visit him. The hospital opened in 1882 and closed down completely in 2016, having originally been built on an undeveloped site between Tennyson Road and Alexandra Road to replace the Infirmary of 1839, which stood at the east end of what is now St. Margaret’s Plain - known at the time as Infirmary Plain.

Once the older building had ceased its clinical function, it was sold for £550 and converted into St. Margaret’s National (all-age) School - hence, the name St. Margaret’s Plain, which is still in use today. Lowestoft’s first mainline health-care facility had been the Mutford and Lothingland Medical Dispensary, set up in 1822 in a rented house in what is now Crown Street West as a means of “affording medical and surgical assistance to the poor of Lowestoft and its neighbourhood”. The man appointed to act as physician was Dr. William Collins Worthington and he stayed on, in post, when the Infirmary replaced the Dispensary (1839) - finally retiring in 1870. Details concerning the Infirmary reveal that it had two wards, each with eight beds, with a further smaller ward fir cases requiring extra attention.

In 1872, its annual number of in-patients was c. sixty in number, with a further 300 being attended to by its own dispensary. Prior to the Infirmary being built, a small gaol or lock-up, known as “The Cage”, had occupied the site, and this was used to hold - on remand - people due to appear before the town’s petty sessions or quarter sessions (mainly the latter, because of the more serious nature of criminal behaviour handled). The right to hold legal sessions was granted to the town in 1748, partly in recognition of its importance in the local area, but also perhaps to relieve Beccles of sole responsibility for the administration of justice in North-east Suffolk.

The presence of “The Cage” led to the name Cage Green being used for this part of the town, for a while, but it had originally carried the title of Fair Green, or The Fairstead, because that is where the town’s medieval fairs were staged. Immediately to the south (from Dove Street down to St. Peter’s Street, using today’s terminology) was Goose Green - set aside for the grazing of these particular birds. Both greens, combined, formed an important, small area of common land on the town’s western perimeter - being the smallest of all the local communal open spaces. The others (given in alphabetical order) were Church Green, the Denes, North Common, Skamacre Heath, Smithmarsh and South Common.
 

All seven of these areas provided and allowed different kinds of use by the townspeople: rough grazing, the cutting of bracken for animal bedding, the cutting of gorse for firing bread ovens, the drying of fishing nets and other gear (specifically, the Denes), and in limited cases (and areas) the digging of clay and sand. But everything came at a price - apart from the drying of nets - with small fines(fees) paid into the manorial coffers.