Memory Lane

Cardiff remembered: Hospital was like a home to patients who had to stay there

Author Brian Lee writes a weekly history and nostalgia column for the South Wales Echo

Saffron Jenkins

Saffron Jenkins, InYourArea Community

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Cardiff remembered: Hospital was like a home to patients who had to stay there

REST UP: Part of the hospital at Sully, June 15, 1955 ( Image: Media Wales)

Written by Brian Lee

Many Cardiffians were at one time patients in Sully Hospital.

In fact, my wife Jacqueline was one of them.

The hospital was opened on November 6, 1936, by the Duke of Kent and accompanied by the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Plymouth.

They arrived at the patients’ entrance to be received by the president of the association and chairman of the Sully Hospital Committee, Lord Davies.

The music for the occasion was provided by the Cardiff Transport Band and, after the National Anthem, the Bishop of Llandaff said a dedicatory prayer.

Sully Hospital was built between Sully and Barry, on the coast of the Severn Estuary, on 94 acres of land and 69 acres of foreshore.

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The 300-bed tuberculosis hospital, which looked towards the Somerset and North Devon coast, was home as well as hospital for many Cardiffians who, by the nature of their illness, spent months rather than weeks there.

Jacqueline, who spent five months in Sully Hospital as a patient in Gwyneth Ward, she told me how the girls on her ward would sing songs to pass away the time.

There would be drawing and painting competitions for the patients, and she still has the drawing of an Alsatian dog that won her half-a-crown (two shillings and sixpence) all those years ago.

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She recalled how at night, when the mist crawled over the coast, she would listen to the fog horns warning passing ships. It was on nights like this, knowing she was separated from our-then four-year-old daughter Amanda, that she cried herself to sleep.

Things were made a little better when I had a telephone installed so she could speak to our daughter without putting her at any risk.

MEAL TIMES: The kitchen at the Sully Hospital pictured in 1936 (Image: Media Wales)

Meanwhile, there have been many royal visits to Cardiff and it may be of some interest to list some of the early ones.

The Cardiff and county borough records tell us that the earliest recorded visit of a crowned sovereign to Cardiff was in 1172 when Henry II passed through Cardiff on his journey to and from Ireland, breaking the journey both going and returning.

King John sailed to Ireland from Pembroke and might well have passed through the town, while we know for certain that Edward II is said to have stayed in Cardiff for two days in the October of 1326 before moving on to Caerphilly Castle. Charles I visited the city on two occasions during July 1645 for the purpose of settling grievances.

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Apparently there is no record of any member of the royal family visiting the town for nearly two centuries after Charles I. This was the visit on August 12, 1826, of William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester.

And it was in 1890 that the Duke of Gloucester came to Cardiff to open the Clarence Road Bridge.

MODERN DAY: The Clarence road bridge, Cardiff, pictured in 2020 (Image: Rob Browne/ Media Wales)

Edward VII, as the Prince of Wales, accompanied by the Princess of Wales (later Queen Alexandra) visited the great Cardiff industrial and maritime exhibition in 1896 and George V, as Prince of Wales, received the Freedom of Cardiff on June 29, 1905.

The city had undergone an astonishing period of growth in the century preceding that particular royal visit. Did you know that the census returns showed that there were just 1,875 inhabitants of Cardiff in the year 1801?

Ninety-three years later, in 1894, the population of the town had risen to 148,890.

  • Please send your pictures and stories to Brian Lee, Cardiff Remember, South Wales Echo, Six Park Street, Cardiff, CF10 1XR
  • or email brianlee4@virginmedia.com
  • If sending a letter, please include your phone number.

Written by Brian Lee

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