THE new general hospital which opened in Poole 50 years ago was a huge facility.

It had 508 beds– including 52 maternity beds with 16 special care baby beds, and a 50-bed isolation unit.

Near the main hospital building was a 13-storey nursing building, providing homes for 202 nurses, as well as the Cornelia Home for 50 nurses. There were flats for six married doctors and penthouse accommodation above the main hospital for 14 single doctors.

A booklet issued at the time Poole General Hospital opened also showed how busy the place would be. It was expecting to admit 13,500 inpatients a year, staying an average of 12 days.

There would be 1,800 day patients treated and 140,000 outpatients seen, with 40,000 expected at the accident department that would be the main emergency centre for Poole and Bournemouth.

There would be 2,500 meals produced every day, while 4.5m cubic feet of accommodation had to be cleaned and serviced.

The whole project cost £4.5million in 1969 money.

Its staff included 50 doctors, 525 nurses, 100 other professionals and technical services staff, 400 in catering, domestic and supply services and 80 administration and clerical workers.

“This new hospital is a comprehensive district general hospital which, together with various other general hospitals, will serve the 380,000 people in the Bournemouth and East Dorset Group,” the booklet said.

“Ultimately a second new district general hospital will be built in Bournemouth to replace some of the older hospitals and meet the needs of an expected increase in population.”

Many departments would be working through the night, the booklet noted.

It added: “A famous surgeon once stated – when asked his occupation – that he was an ‘artist’ and as such felt the romance and peace of the ‘hospital at night’ was a great stimulus to his work and provided an atmosphere in which he was able to carry out some of his greatest surgical feast.”

The hospital would have one of the few automated pathology labs in the country, as well as a state-of-the-art radiotherapy facility. “The hospital would never boast that this service is unique or better than elsewhere, but such facilities are not found in every district hospital,” it said.

As well as its hundreds of staff, the new hospital would rely on an army of around 200 volunteers, including lay members of the hospital management committee and members of the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service. Volunteers would do everything from designing and buying stained glass windows for the chapel to driving hospital cars.

That guide to Poole General Hospital set it in the context of the history of healthcare in the town – all the way back to the Black Death of 1348, when councillors bought the tongue of land known as Baiter to set aside as a burial ground.

The Society for the Relief of the Sick was founded in 1815. Later, the Bournemouth Public Dispensary opened “for the medical and surgical needs of the poor of Bournemouth and its neighbourhood”, becoming Royal Victoria Hospital on Poole Road in 1890.

In Poole, Lady Wimborne bought two houses in West Street to become Cornelia Cottage Hospital in 1889. It later moved to market street, a site donated by Lady Wimborne, and became Cornelia Hospital – costing 3s 6d a week for adults or 2s 6d for children.

The new Poole General attracted plenty of interest from the beginning.

In 1970, a delegation from Jerusalem’s General Jewish Hospital visited to see the techniques being used there, and the same year saw filming take place for a BBC Play for Today, The Lie, starring Frank Finlay and Gemma Jones.

That year also saw the first extension at the site, taking the number of beds to nearly 600. And there was a drive to recruit nurses, launched at the brand new Arndale Shopping entre by Jessie Matthews, star of Mrs Dale’s Diary (by then renamed The Dales) on the radio.

Plans for a postgraduate building and medical education centre were approved that same year, while DJ Ed Stewart called in to make a recording for a future episode of Junior Choice on the radio.

In 1971, health chiefs meeting in Bournemouth decided there should be one major accident centre in the area, at Poole General.

A similar decision – this time in favour of Royal Bournemouth Hospital – would be made ahead of Poole Hospital’s half-century.