Rookdown House

A week before the outbreak of war, on Sunday 28th August 1939, all but eighty of the 1400 patients were evacuated. From this point, the hospital was taken over by the Emergency Medical Service to provide 2000 beds for civilian and service casualties. A number of London hospitals were also offered wards in Park Prewett, away from the bombing for their own staff and patients.

Rooksdown House, which had opened as a Private Patient unit in 1930 was unlike the rest of the hospital. It was comfortably furnished, including billiard and reading rooms, and private rooms or even suites for those with the ability to pay. The war changed all that and it initially housed a dental theatre and a nurses home. It then became the Plastic Surgery Unit under the command of Sir Harold Gillies.

Harold Gillies

Sir Harold had pioneered the use of plastic surgery in the First World War and had become a consultant adviser to the Ministry of Health. The story goes (according to Reginald Pound's biography) that he and Sir William Kelsey Fry, the dental specialist and long time friend, drove down from London in September 1939 to view Rooksdown. As they entered, a young nurse greeted them with the cry "Ye Gods, a man at last!". Sir Harold retorted "Obviously this is the place for us" and recommended that Rooksdown be commandeered for the purpose.

Sir Harold was a remarkably talented individual. Aside from his gift for Plastic Surgery, he was a musician, an artist and in his younger days, an athlete. He was a rowing blue a Cambridge, a famous golfer and an excellent fly fisherman. It was even said he may have chosen Rooksdown on the basis of the proximity to the river Test. This is more likely than the golf connection - The hospital golf course (later developed into Weybrook Park) had not been built at this time.

The Plastic Surgery unit at Rooksdown opened in February 1940 and continued here until 1957, when it moved to Queen Mary's at Roehampton. The main hospital returned to its use as a psychiatric hospital soon after the end of the war. It was to remain in use up until 1997, by which time 'care in the community' had rendered it obsolete and it closed for the last time.

Sir Harold is remembered locally in the Rooksdown Parish with 'Gillies Drive' named after him.