Reunion for TB hospital patients

Former patients are divided about their time at the hospital

Former staff and patients at a TB hospital in the Swansea Valley have reunited over 45 years after it shut.

About 60 attended the reunion at Craig-y-Nos Castle, near Abercrave, on Wednesday evening.

Better known as the home of opera singer Adelina Patti - it was used as a hospital between 1920 and 1960.

Modern medicines were not available and children with TB lay for months on their backs, drank milk by the pint and spent winters on outdoor wards.

But some patients said they had nothing but happy recollections of their time there - although others said their memories were not so fond.

Sylvia Moore, who was a patient between 1952 and 1957 and then became a nurse at the hospital where she met her husband, attended the event.

Today the castle has been turned into a hotel and visitor centre

She said she was admitted at the age of 12 "critically ill with Tuberculosis of both lungs and severely underweight".

As part of her treatment she had to drink at least four to five pints of milk a day and was one of those whose bed was outside on a balcony.

"During the winter months tarpaulins were placed over the beds as protection from the snow and during the summer months our beds were pulled into the shade of the main ward," she added.

"But despite the cold conditions the dedication of nursing staff never wavered and there are many happy memories, and I'm pleased to say very few sad ones."

She still remembers one Wimbledon fortnight a television was donated to the ward but other beds obscured her view.

"I asked if I could sit up to watch the match but was told by a nurse if I did she would put screens around the bed for the rest of the day," she said.

The castle was used as a hospital between 1920 and 1960

"Obviously I was feeling sorry for myself.

"Then within 15 minutes, in came the nurse with two porters carrying a dressing table with a very large mirror and I was able to watch without sitting up - just one example of the love and dedication we were given."

But Ann Shaw, who spent four years as a patient and runs her own weblog about her time there, said from the responses she received not all remembered the hospital fondly.

"TB was the disease which was never spoken about except in hushed whispers," she said.

She said the hospital was isolated from the rest of Wales and had the appearance of "an impenetrable fortress".

She added: "People have got very different memories - it seems to depend on the age they went in.

"From about the age of 12 onwards children seemed to have a better understanding of what was going on.

"I would say from the responses I have had it seems quite a lot more relaxed in the 1950s compared to how it was in the 1930s and 1940s.

"Part of the problem is that the records don't exist any more - which is not that unusual when hospitals close."