The Abingdon Community Hospital League of Friends were in Bury Street this and last Saturday. Their fund raising helps purchase additional items needed by the hospital. They have an Annual General Meeting at St Helen’s Church Centre on Saturday 16th November (10-12) when their raffle will be drawn. They always like to welcome new members.

Abingdon Community Hospital, on Marcham Road, provides rehabilitation and palliative care for people who no longer require the services of an acute hospital. On site there is a Minor Injuries Unit, the Oxfordshire Stroke Rehabilitation Unit, and an X Ray Department. The hospital is part of the Oxford Health NHS Trust.

The hospital began its existence in 1900 as the Abingdon Isolation Hospital and was built by the Abingdon Joint Hospital Board at a cost of £5000 on the Marcham Road. It served both Abingdon Rural and Abingdon Borough districts. It started off as a hospital with 16 beds for infectious diseases such as scarlet fever, typhoid, diphtheria, and cerebro-spinal fever. Small-pox cases were sent to a specialist hospital in Reading. (Thankyou to the Reading Mercury – Saturday 22 July 1899 – for the details)

The hospital became a more general hospital as hygiene, vaccination and treatment improved, and the need for isolation hospitals declined. General and maternity services moved to the Marcham Road site when the Warren Hospital, on Radley Road, was closed from the 1950s.

The League of Friends has supported the hospital through good times and bad.