With reference to your request for information about a Winterton Hospital patient who died at Holywood Hall Wolsingham.
Wolsingham is in Weardale and Holywood Hall hospital was the regional sanatorium for the treatment of TB but by early 1960's there were so few cases that it was virtually redundant although the open verandah rooms were still in use.
In 1962 the decision was made to transfer elderly patients from Winterton Hospital Sedgefield ( County Mental Hospital ) to this beautiful setting. The patients who were moved from Sedgefield to Wolsingham were mainly elderly, long-term residents of impaired mental faculty, who had no living relatives to care for them and were 'institutionalised' and would have been unable to cope with independent living.
50 years ago mental health welfare was managed very differently.
Some of the patients committed to asylums would today have been described as 'autistic', 'schizophrenic', 'manic depressive', or even been foolish enough to have an illegitimate child and be committed as morally degenerate and subsequently abandoned by family. Some mental failure was caused by drinking water from lead pipes which were still in situ in many parts of West Durham until the 1950's.
If there was no living next of kin on the hospital record, on death the patient was given a state funded 'pauper's funeral' marked only by a numbered stone and recorded in cemetery records. In the case of Wolsingham, probably the parish church, or its associated cemetery ( not as has been suggested the Winterton Hospital cemetery.)
My Aunt, Mabel Robson and her husband Bob Robson were the two senior Winterton Staff who managed the transfer of these lovely elderly people to retirement in the beautiful setting, and lived at the hospital. The transfers began in October 1962. Patients were mainly able bodied and had access to the small town and were encouraged to get out and about with an accompanying adult but had the secure care of good living quarters, were well fed and all their needs catered for until death.
Some other staff moved from Sedgefield but I cannot recall their names. Others were sanitorium staff.
As I remember it, most would be in their late 40's to mid 50's then, and my Aunt and Uncle are both long dead.
Incidentally, that first winter was once of the worst ever experienced in County Durham and Holywood Hall being 'up the hill from the village' became very difficult to reach!
