Lady Cooper's Hospital for Officers

Opened in October 1914 “Lady Cooper’s Hospital for Officers” was a privately staffed Auxiliary Hospital linked, like the Royal Hampshire County Hospital and the Red Cross hospitals in the Cathedral Close and nearby local school buildings, to the Winchester Military Hospital in Peninsular Barracks.

The Hospital continued in operation throughout the conflict and, as it's name implied, this was a hospital purely for Officers, 'Other Ranks' being sent to the larger but far more basic tented, then later hutted, military hospital in the grounds.

The hospital's opening came during not long before the departure of the 8th Division from Hursley, and only shortly after the Division's Officers had received a salutary warning, in the form of a lecture by General Montgomery, about the new form of warfare they were to face in Flanders. A warning made all too real as casualties began to return from 'The Front', some to the military hospital within the grounds others to Hursley House.

Ironically, it was not the fighting that brought one officer of the 8th Division to the hospital. A few days before the Division's departure Miller, the new Divisional Transport Officer, had his leg broken by one of the horses he was responsible for. Possibly an act of revenge by the horse as the condition of the animals left after the Division's departure was bad enough for the subject to be raised in Parliament.

However, in perhaps the strangest twist of fate one of the first patients was to be Lady Cooper’s eldest son, 2nd Lt. George J.R. Cooper of the Royal Scots Greys, who had been wounded in the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force from Mons. By the end of the war, now promoted, Captain George J.R. Cooper had been forced to avail himself of his mother's hospital on more than one occasion, although it did allow him the opportunity to attend his brother's wedding in 1915.

Occupying parts of the first and upper floor of Hursley House the hospital had 50 beds and by the end of the war had cared for over a thousand Officers.

Supported by the vast wealth of the Coopers the hospital was well equipped with what was reportedly one of the first X-ray machines in the county and "Dr Schnee's Four-Cell Bath", an electrical muscle stimulation machine that today looks more like an instrument of torture than a medical device but its effectiveness in treating nerves damaged by war is attested to by surviving patients letters. One patient, writing to his mother, drew small sketches of how the improvement in the movement in his finger had progressed since treatment started.

The hospital itself was staffed with a leading surgeon from Winchester, Dr Godwin, who was based at the Royal Hampshire Hospital in Winchester but also worked in several other auxiliary hospitals in Hampshire, and an Australian doctor, Dr Clarke. Both doctors were ably supported by privately funded nurses headed by their QAIMNSR matron Sister Lillian Boughey.

Hospitals like Lady Cooper's formed the end of a chain stretching from the trenches through France back to England. In 1917 acing Captain Brett of the Connaught Rangers recalled his journey back to 'Blighty'. Wounded in the face defending captured trenches at Bullecourt, to the north of the main battle of Cambrai, he had walked from the front-line to a casualty clearing station from where …

“I was picked up by an ambulance … taken to railhead where I was washed, plugged and bandaged, put into a train and taken to Le Havre, and thence by hospital ship to Southampton, all most pleasant and comfortable and most interesting. It was particularly interesting to see a woman again after three months without a sight of one. From there I was taken by ambulance to a fine large park near Winchester, where I was very well looked after and enjoyed myself very much.”

For officers recuperating from their wounds Hursley was a world away from the war with lavish dinners served in the house dining room, now converted into an Officer’s Mess, the use of Sir George Cooper’s cars to drive into Winchester, boating on the lake, games of tennis in the Cooper's court or games of croquet and badminton on the lawn or simply strolling in the park with the young nurses.

The grounds also gave wounded officers the chance to reflect and it was from the grounds of Hursley Park that Lieutenant Harold Lamont Simpson wrote at least two of his poems in October 1917, including

'The Hospital'

Fool-like, “A little while,” I said,

“I will forget that men are dead;

I will not think, but only know

Life is good, as the days go.

The quiet sun on quiet trees

Will bring back flocking memories

Of the old ways and old friends,

And so, still this English Autumn ends.

Happy as the trees, that are

Quiet in the sun, I’ll fare

Sleepily, and savouring

Each quiet and contented thing

That an English garden shows

In Autumn time – the late last rose,

The flash of sunflowers, prodigal

Of gold for the years’s coronal.”

But somehow, even in strange faces

Lurk the half-forgotten traces

Of faces loved and known; or a snatch

Of an old marching song will catch

At my memory. There are countless things –

The song that some wayfarer sings,

The quiet of a sunset sky,

Grey-mare clouds that rush by

A shivering moon, certain flowers –

These can rouse the thing that cowers

Deep in the heart of my content.

My broidered web of dreams is rent,

And I see this and that friend go

To death that is merciful, being quick,

And, shuddering, another know

Agony, that turns the devil sick.

Hursley, October 1917

The commitment of the Coopers to support the war effort was remarkable, indeed exceptional. Even before the war Lady Cooper had been instrumental in the formation of the three Hursley Voluntary Aid Detachments and sponsoring Hampshire inter-detachment competitions in The Cooper Cup. During the war, in addition to the donation of the estate for the army camp and the Officers Hospital they had been large contributors to fund raising drives, like that for socks for the troops in late 1914 (no doubt prompted in part by their first hand knowledge of the experiences of the men in the camp outside their door) where they donated £750 compared to the King’s £100. However, it was Sir George’s 1917 contribution of £2,635,000 in War Bonds that stands out, as it made him the largest private contributor to the war effort and made news around the world.