Wordsley Hospital was an

NHS The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...

hospital A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emerge ...

located in

Wordsley Wordsley is a suburban area of Stourbridge in the West Midlands, England. It is part of the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley and falls into the Stourbridge (DY8) postcode and address area, being just north of the River Stour. Wordsley is part of the ...

, near

Stourbridge Stourbridge is a market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley in the West Midlands, England, situated on the River Stour. Historically in Worcestershire, it was the centre of British glass making during the Industrial Revolution. The 20 ...

West Midlands West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

(formerly

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

History

The facility was built as part of the redevelopment of the Stourbridge

workhouse In Britain, a workhouse () was an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. (In Scotland, they were usually known as poorhouses.) The earliest known use of the term ''workhouse'' ...

between 1902 and 1904. It was extended in 1915 during the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

to provide an annexe to the 1st Southern Military Hospital. Seven new wards were built 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 opposin ...

. Ridge Hill Hospital, which specialised in mental health, opened on an adjacent site in 1982. At the beginning of the 1980s, Wordsley Hospital was chosen as the site of a new maternity unit to serve the whole Dudley borough and replacing the existing maternity wards at Wordsley as well as

Burton Road Hospital Burton Road Hospital was a National Health Service hospital situated in Dudley, West Midlands, England. History The hospital has its origins in the infirmary for the Dudley Union Workhouse which was built to the west of the main workhouse site in ...

Dudley Dudley is a large market town and administrative centre in the county of West Midlands, England, southeast of Wolverhampton and northwest of Birmingham. Historically an exclave of Worcestershire, the town is the administrative centre of the ...

and Mary Stevens Maternity Home in

. Construction work on the new 118-bed maternity unit began during 1985. The maternity unit was officially opened by the

Duchess of Gloucester Duke of Gloucester () is a British royal title (after Gloucester), often conferred on one of the sons of the reigning monarch. The first four creations were in the Peerage of England and the last in the Peerage of the United Kingdom; the curren ...

on 24 November 1988. However, in the early 1990s plans were unveiled for Wordsley Hospital,

Guest Hospital The Guest Hospital is a hospital in Dudley, West Midlands, England, part of the Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust History Victorian origins Situated in Tipton Road, Dudley the buildings were originally constructed as almshouses in 1849 by the Ea ...

and parts of the

Corbett Hospital Corbett Hospital is a National Health Service (NHS) hospital run by the Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust located in Amblecote, Stourbridge, West Midlands, England. The current hospital is an out-patient centre which opened on 25 May 2007 in a ...

to be closed and the services relocated to an expanded

Russells Hall Hospital Russells Hall Hospital is an NHS general hospital located in Dudley, West Midlands, England, managed by the Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust. The hospital is south-west of the town centre on the A4101 road, which connects to the Kingswinford a ...

. Local MP

Ian Pearson Ian Phares Pearson (born 5 April 1959) is a British Labour Party politician who was a member of parliament (MP) from 1994 until 2010, representing Dudley West from 1994 until 1997, and then Dudley South from 1997 until his retirement from th ...

was at the centre of a campaign to try to keep at least some services, particularly the maternity unit, at Wordsley. There was much outrage in the local community at the decision to close Wordsley Hospital, with the closure of the Corbett Hospital and Guest Hospital attracting similar condemnation from the local community. The first phase of Wordsley Hospital's closure took place on 7 January 2005, when the maternity unit closed after just under 17 years in use and was relocated to Russells Hall. The last services at Wordsley were relocated on 22 April 2005. The sale of the site was agreed in March 2005 (when some services were still at the hospital) when Mar City Developments purchased it for £14.75 million with a view for redeveloping it for housing.

Redevelopment

A new facility at Ridge Hill Hospital was officially opened on 18 October 2006 by local MP

. Some of the original Ridge Hill Hospital buildings are still in use, although others were demolished in 2007 and several are still standing disused. The road link to Wordsley Hospital was severed when the bulk of the Wordsley buildings were demolished in 2007. 12 homes on Ashdown Drive, which had been built in the 1960s and houses doctors and nurses at the hospital until its closure, were finally put up for sale by the local health trust in December 2010, nearly six years after the hospital closed.

Baby snatch incident

On 6 May 2002, a newborn baby girl was snatched from the unit by a local woman who had recently suffered a miscarriage. She was recovered seven hours later. It was later revealed that CCTV cameras at the maternity unit were not working when the baby was snatched.

References

{{authority control Residential buildings completed in 1903 Hospitals in the West Midlands (county) Buildings and structures in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley Defunct hospitals in England Workhouses in Staffordshire Workhouses in the West Midlands (county)