Alnwick Infirmary is a community hospital in

Alnwick Alnwick ( ) is a market town in Northumberland, England, of which it is the traditional county town. The population at the 2011 Census was 8,116. The town is south of Berwick-upon-Tweed and the Scottish border, inland from the North Sea ...

Northumberland Northumberland ( ) is a ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North East England, on the Anglo-Scottish border, border with Scotland. It is bordered by the North Sea to the east, Tyne and Wear and County Durham to the south, Cumb ...

, England. It is managed by

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is an NHS foundation trust which provides hospital and community health services in North Tyneside and hospital, community health and adult social care services in Northumberland. History The trust ...

History

An infirmary at Alnwick was instigated at a public meeting on 9 June 1815 as the Alnwick Dispensary "to administer advice and medicine to the poor, to promote vaccine inoculation and to afford aid in cases requiring the greater applications of surgery." George Tate credits William Burrell of Broom Park and John Lambert of Alnwick as principal founders; Lambert acted as secretary and treasurer until his decease in 1849. The infirmary was funded by a mix of donations and subscriptions; £2081 was received in the first year, much of which was invested in interest-bearing funds. Governors of the infirmary, who subscribed yearly one guinea or donated ten guineas, had the privilege of recommending patients for care. Subscriptions and donations continued to be in excess of the expenditure up to 1839, when £4900 was invested in 3 per cent

consols Consols (originally short for consolidated annuities, but subsequently taken to mean consolidated stock) were government bond, government debt issues in the form of perpetual bonds, redeemable at the option of the government. The first British co ...

. The institution having then the reputation of being a rich body, donations were seldom made and the subscriptions were lessened, so that debt accumulated and it became necessary to sell stock funds and to seek additional public aid to clear off the incumbrance. The financial position was stabilised by the 1860s when income and expenditure were typically about £420 per annum. William Davison acted as apothecary for the infirmary; a medical school Davison set up in his pharmacy premises was noted throughout the North of England. The Dispensary was sited first in a house on Fenkle Street, and moved to a purpose-built building on Dispensary Street in 1819. It changed its name to the Alnwick Infirmary in 1849. New hospital premises were built and opened in 1908 close to the

Tenantry Column The Tenantry Column is a monument to the south of Alnwick town centre, in Northumberland, England. It was erected in 1816 by the tenants of Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland in thanks for his reduction of their rents during the post-Napoleo ...

. Alnwick infirmary joined the

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...

in 1948.

Other Alnwick hospitals

A hospital formed part of the Alnwick Union Workhouse, built in 1841 on Wagonway road. A fever hospital was established between 1886 and 1888 on a greenfield site about south of the workhouse, and was used until 1952.

Notes

References

{{Authority control Hospitals in Northumberland NHS hospitals in England