The Eccles and Patricroft Journal for December 1965 told the story of how the Borough was to lose the Accident and Emergency Units at Eccles and Patricroft Hospital on Cromwell Road.
The fight to save the hospital, which opened in 1883, raged for several years until finally the axe fell.
Mr H.P. Ash the secretary to the West Manchester Hospital Management Services told the paper: “The Eccles and Patricroft Hospital a constituent unit of the West Manchester Group, will close on December 31 1965, to allow work to proceed on the development of the hospital into a consultant/general practitioners maternity hospital of 23 beds.
“The Minister of Health has approved the conversion plan which is estimated to cost £70,000.
“It is anticipated that the hospital will re-open in about 18 months time – about the middle of 1967.
“Arrangements have been made for general practitioners to refer surgical patients to other hospitals in the area, the nearest of which are in the Salford Groups Hospitals and Park Hospital, Davyhulme.”
Eccles and Patricroft Hospital – By Paul Blain via Flickr
Eccles and Patricroft Hospital – By Smiggy Smith via Flickr
After hearing this decision Councillor J. Burrows, Chairman of the Hospital Retention Committee issued the following statement: “We are very disappointed at the decision of the Minister to close the hospital and convert it into a maternity unit.
“We still feel that this decision is wrong and what we need in Eccles is a general hospital.
“We shall be calling a meeting of the Retention Committee in the New Year.”
Research into this magnificent building, in red brick with stone facings, shows that it was established in 1877 and opened as the Eccles and Patricroft Dispensary and extended in 1883 as a cottage hospital by the architect Henry Lord.
A children’s ward and nurses’ home were opened in 1924 and a medical wing in 1928.
It was a common sight for patients to be wheeled out onto the cast iron verandahs overlooking Cromwell Road to soak up the fresh air as part of their treatment.
Sadly all pleas to keep the hospital were doomed and the entire building would close in 1985.
