Tag: Manor Hospital

January 6th – A fair commute in both directions for once, in fact almost sunny.

On the way, the sun was trapped above low smog but I didn’t mind – as I came through central Walsall on the ring road, it made everything look beautiful. I don’t know if it was just in the haze or my mind, but everything was suffused in a delicious yellow, soft light.

The Workhouse Guardian’s Office in front of the Manor Hospital may still be derelict, and gradually being carried to dust, but it’s at times like this it regains some of the lost stature.

Could do with a few more days like this, please.

February 13th – It struck me as I returned from work late, that hospitals grow their own economic microclimate. All round Walsall’s new Manor Hospital, there are a range of convenience shops. More than average numbers of newsagents, cafes, taxi offices and even undertakers. Oddly, fast food outlets of varying degrees of healthiness also proliferate. I wonder if they’re serving the staff, or patients more? Here on the Pleck Road, business looked brisk, even at this evening hour.

February 9th – The old General Hospital in Walsall closed a long time ago. It’s services moved into a large new complex at the site of Walsall Manor Hospital, I guess nearly two decades ago now. The old, rambling, ramshackle and inadequate edifice was mostly demolished, except for the original, Victorian outpatients building. This was retained and formed part of a new social housing development on the site. The doors aren’t original, but the ironwork sign above them is; as are the intricate terracotta ornamentations. Originally called ‘The Heritage’, the name seems to have been inexplicably changed to ‘Lion House’. It’s nice to see such a prominent bit of Walsall’s architectural history survive – proof that we can get it right occasionally.

January 18th – But flung into the modern age we were, for better of worse. This was once the site of a workhouse, so feared in the memory of old Walsallians that one elderly lady I knew, when confused and aged, swore she’d not let her family take her there. They were actually trying to take her to the Manor Hospital for a checkup, the older establishment utilising many of the workhouse buildings. 

In the last decade or two, it all changed; first a new Accident & Emergency, then a new hospital, provided by the wonders of magic beans and PFI. This shiny new building, filled with wonderful staff and equipment, is somehow redolent of Art Deco in it’s night time luminescence, yet I fear it may yet, through its cost, render the NHS in Walsall back into servitude. 

Progress, eh?