Penley Community Hospital ( cy, Ysbyty Cymuned Llannerch Banna) is a former

community hospital A community hospital can be purely a nominal designation or have a more specific meaning. When specific, it refers to a hospital that is accessible to the general public, and provides a general or specific medical care which is usually short-term, ...

dedicated to

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...

ex-servicemen in

Penley Penley ( cy, Llannerch Banna) is a village in the County Borough of Wrexham, in Wales close to the border with Shropshire, England, and had a population of 606 as of the 2011 census. The village was, until 1974, in an exclave of the ancient ...

, Wales. It was managed by North East Wales NHS Trust and closed in 2002.

History

The site was a

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

hospital during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. The hospital was founded in 1946, as part of an initiative to care for

ex-servicemen who fought alongside the Allies in the Second World War, as well as their families, who settled in the area. As a result of this influx, the population of Penley increased threefold. Residents at the hospital and camp included the Polish military commander, Wacław Przeździecki. At its peak, in the early 1950s, the hospital housed more than 2,000 patients and staff. By 2002 just 6 patients remained and the hospital closed. The original hospital building (which had space for 30 wards but was now only using one) was subsequently demolished and a small, modern facility was opened in 2004, with 8 individual rooms for the surviving Polish residents.

References

{{authority control Hospitals in Wrexham County Borough Hospitals established in 1946 Hospital buildings completed in 2004 Defunct hospitals in Wales