Cromer and District Hospital (formerly known as Cromer Cottage Hospital) opened in 1932 in the suburb of Suffield Park in the town of

Cromer Cromer ( ) is a coastal town and civil parish on the north coast of the North Norfolk district of the county of Norfolk, England. It is north of Norwich, northwest of North Walsham and east of Sheringham on the North Sea coastline. The local ...

within the English county of

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

. The hospital is run by the

Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is an NHS Foundation Trust which runs Cromer Hospital and Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, both in Norfolk, England. The trust was first established on 8 February 1994 as the ...

and provides an important range of acute consultant and nurse-led services to the residents of the district of

North Norfolk North Norfolk is a Non-metropolitan district, local government district in Norfolk, England. Its council is based in Cromer, and the largest town is North Walsham. The district also includes the towns of Fakenham, Holt, Norfolk, Holt, Shering ...

History

Early history

The hospital has its origins in a medical facility formed from two cottages in Louden Road in 1866. The hospital was rebuilt in Louden Road in 1888 but then moved to a purpose-built facility opened by Lady Suffield at Old Mill Road in 1932. The hospital 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 and a new out-patients building opened in 1954.

Redevelopment of the site

In 2001 Mrs Sagle Bernstein, a Cromer resident, left £11m to Cromer and District Hospital in recognition of the excellent care that her sister had received as a patient at the hospital. The terms of Mrs Bernstein's will were that it was to be spent on "improvement of general facilities" and could only be spent at Cromer Hospital. Some £500,000 of the legacy was spent on an eight-station

renal In humans, the kidneys are two reddish-brown bean-shaped blood-filtering organs that are a multilobar, multipapillary form of mammalian kidneys, usually without signs of external lobulation. They are located on the left and right in the retrop ...

dialysis unit which opened in June 2006. The dialysis unit was relocated to the refurbished Barclay ward in January 2011. Following a feasibility study carried out in 2006, a tender competition for the new hospital was undertaken and a

planning application Planning permission or building permit refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. House building permits, for example, are subject to buil ...

for a £26 million scheme was submitted to

North Norfolk District Council North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography. Etymology T ...

in November 2008. The trust subsequently scaled back the scheme and a revised planning application for a £15 million scheme was submitted to the District Council in June 2009. After the application was approved in May 2010, construction of the works, which were designed by Purcell Miller Tritton and were undertaken by Mansell, part of

Balfour Beatty Balfour Beatty plc () is an international infrastructure group based in the United Kingdom with capabilities in construction services, support services and infrastructure investments. A constituent of the FTSE 250 Index, the company is active ac ...

, started in autumn 2010 and were completed in Autumn 2012.

Notable Staff

When the hospital was reopened in 1888 in two houses in Louden Road, a succession of

London Hospital The Royal London Hospital is a large teaching hospital in Whitechapel in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is part of Barts Health NHS Trust. It provides district general hospital services for the City of London and London Borough of Tow ...

trained matrons ran the nursing department of the new hospital until at least 1917.Rogers, Sarah (2022). 'A Maker of Matrons’? A study of Eva Lückes’s influence on a generation of nurse leaders:1880–1919' (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Huddersfield, April 2022) They appear to have been selected because some of the Quaker founders philanthropic interests in both The London Hospital and Cromer Cottage Hospital. Philanthropic individuals who were interested in the management of the cottage hospital and attended the opening of the new cottage hospital in 1888 included Sir Samuel Hoare M.P., and the Buxton and Gurney families, prominent Quaker families. The matrons listed below all trained at The London under

Eva Luckes Eva Charlotte Ellis Luckes (8 July 1854 – 16 February 1919) was matron of the London Hospital from 1880 to 1919. Early life Eva Charlotte Ellis Luckes (she spelled her name Lückes with the umlaut until World War I)Rogers, Sarah (2022). ...

, an influential matron and friend of

Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale (; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English Reform movement, social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during th ...

's. * Emma Minnedew (1859/1860– ), from March 1889 * Sarah Lambert (1858/1859– ), from 1891 * Mary Thompson, from January 1895 * Jessie Brooks (1864– ), from March 1895 * Sarah Lambert, reappointed in 1902 * May Beatrice Towill (1886–1980), from June 1915May Beatrice Towill, Register of Sisters and Nurses; RLHLH/N/4/3, 287; Barts Health NHS Trust Archives and Museums, London * Elsie Mabel Marriot, from November 1917

References

External links

* {{authority control Hospital buildings completed in 1932 Hospital buildings completed in 2011 NHS hospitals in England Hospitals in Norfolk University of East Anglia Cromer