Dear all

 

We are pleased to announce that our Heritage Lottery Funded social history project ‘YOUR HOSPITAL: THE HERITAGE OF THE ROYAL SUSSEX COUNTY HOSPITAL, 1828 TO TODAY’ is now looking for local volunteers for the following areas of the project:

-          Oral History

-          Collections and Interpretation

 

To enquire about the Volunteering Open day please email the Heritage Officer: [log in to unmask]

 

The project remunerates volunteers with reasonable travel expenses as per the Trusts policy, covers the cost of a DBS check and provides specialist training provided either by a Consultant or Heritage officer, depending on the preferred area.

 

About the Hospital:

The Royal Sussex County Hospital (Formally the ‘Sussex County Hospital & General Sea-Bathing Infirmary’) opened in 1828 as a ‘Voluntary Hospital’. A single building, it provided limited treatments and limited patient intake - aiming to treat the ‘sick and lame and poor of every county and nation’, whom were referred by a wealthier subscriber or benefactor upon eligibility, application and selection. This facility sat within a society of Parish managed poverty relief, such as workhouses, and private healthcare; described by some retrospectively as a terrifying roulette of quackery and poisons. As a voluntary Hospital, Sussex County Hospital was funded via charitable subscription to provide safer basic treatments such as relief, fracture setting and amputations; It was proof of the ambition for change in Healthcare provision and society, and a tangible reaction to the fact that as Brighton grew fashionable this ‘opulence had drawn around it a circle of poverty’.

 

Since this time the Hospital has constantly grown and changed alongside the city and its community. It has also evolved with the development of Medical Science, societal changes and then the establishment of the NHS. As a NHS Acute and Teaching hospital it’s campus is again being modernised to meet the contemporary and growing needs of its community with the 3T’s Capital redevelopment project. Through an oral history program, onsite exhibition and events programme the HLF project aims to research, record and interpret the material and built heritage of the site, celebrate its people: both patients, local residents, volunteers and staff whom have supported the Hospital, and provide an insight into the patient experience throughout the decades.  

 

Best wishes

 

Samantha Sharman

Heritage Officer (Part Time) 3Ts Redevelopment Project / Library & Knowledge Service

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust

Eastern Road, Brighton

Email: [log in to unmask]

Web: www.bsuh.nhs.uk

Twitter: @BSUH_Heritage