Monument record 0939800000 - Stoke Mandeville Hospital

Stoke Mandeville Hospital built as part of a second programme of constructing Emergency Medical Service Hospitals initiated in early 1940 and coinciding with the fall of France. Designed as a series of mainly brick and concrete hutted blocks (known as spider blocks) connected by covered walkways (B1).
Hospital opened in 1940 (B3).
The National Spinal Injuries Centre established in 1944 by Dr Ludwig Guttman, hosted annual paraplegic games from 1954 (B4).
Buildings report dated April 1992 - July 1993 held at NMR (B5)

A military hospital of World War II date is visible on historic aerial photographs as extant buildings and structures and was mapped as part of the Aylesbury Vale Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18604). Located on the east side of Mandeville Road and Lower Road (B4443), on the southern side of Aylesbury, near Stoke Mandeville, and centred at SP 82696 11868. This hospital was one of 12 set up 1944 for spinal injuries, built as part of the Emergency Medical Scheme, during World War II. It is visible on aerial photographs as groups of long low buildings with the nurses’ accommodation arranged in distinctive semi-circles at each end of the site and the wards arranged in two lines of 7 single storey buildings, linked by corridors, and with Stanton Air Raid Shelters between the wards which were single storey and built of brick or timber. Three of the air raid shelters are still standing on aerial photographs from 2006. No plan or description of the site could be found but individual photographs, taken by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, for the Hospitals Project, has some labelled images which allowed some of the buildings to be identified; these include the admin buildings, air raid shelters, nurses accommodation and the wards. A probable boiler house with a very tall chimney was also visible on aerial photographs. The sports fields surrounding the hospital buildings were not present on the 1940s images and these extra facilites only started to show on photos from the 1960s onwards. Some of these buildings had been demolished by 1994 and the remainder have all been replaced by 2010 with some of the land redeveloped for housing and new hospital buildings constructed on the rest of the area. The site also included the buildings for an isolation hospital, built early in the late 19th/early 20th century, all but one of these buildings have also been replaced with newer facilities by 2021. The remaining mid 20th century building is still visible on Google Streetview next to the road. (6-24)