Memories Of Hyde Hospital

After showing the Old Lodge on Mottram Old Road ,Stephen contacted us about the time he worked at Hyde Hospital in the 1970s and would we like to hear how he spent his working day. So ,with the help of some photo's from the hospitals past sent to us by Paul Taylor, I will turn the post over to Steve..... Seeing the pictures of the Old Lodge at Hyde Hospital has brought back some happy memories and I would like to share a few with you . I started work at Hyde hospital in 1977 as a hospital porter. The buildings consisted of THE LODGE , THE ADMINISTRATION BLOCK & KITCHEN & NURSES HOME , 4 WARDS , THE PORTERS ROOM , THE OLD LAUNDRY BLOCK AND  THE MORTUARY. Some of the staff were MR PRITCHARD HEAD MATRON  he lived in the lodge WARD 1 SISTER HUGHES WARD 2 SISTER MURPHY WARD 3 SISTER BEELEY WARD 4 SISTER MORGAN HEAD CHEF MIKE PERRIN ADMIN MANAGER SUSAN GREAVES OTHER PORTER JOHN GREEN A typical day for me was at 6 am go to the kitchen to peel the spuds in the potato machine.then when the breakfasts  were ready take them to each ward from the main kitchen .After breakfast the pots had to be returned to the kitchen. Other jobs throughout the day were to take clean linen and stores to the wards and collect the dirty linen and take it to the old laundry block for collection to go to Ashton laundry. All these deliveries to the seperate wards had to be made with a 2 wheeled flat bed hand truck and in winter it was very hard work. The worst ward was ward 4 this had a very steep ramp at the front and you had to take a run up to the ramp to make sure you got all the contents of the truck to the top intact ha ha . We finished work at 6 30 in the evenings and worked alternate weekends, there were no night porters. If someone died in the night that would be your first job the next morning to remove the body and put in the fridge in the  mortuary at the bottom of the hospital grounds. Later on just before I left to go and work for Tameside council in Hyde as a gardener they bought an electric milk float to deliver supplies to the wards. John Green who was the other porter used to be the gardener at the hospital before being a porter and he used to do paintings .He did some fantastic paintings of the hospital grounds. I only worked for 2 years at Hyde hospital but it was a really nice place to work and all the staff were great to get on with . Thanks for reading my memories STEPHEN HILL.   Excellent Stephen, I hope some one reads this and recalls you working there. If anyone would like to something like this fell free to get in touch with us.