In 1901, 29 year-old District Nurse Sally Macleod from Assynt in Sutherland was the only resident of this establishment. It had been built and endowed by Mrs Frances Sarah Thomas to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897.
I must thank a kind correspondent who brought an obituary of Mrs Thomas that was written in 1902 to my attention, for it contains the only reference to this institution that I am aware of. It is not labelled on the 1903 OS 1:10,560 map which was the first to be published after the hospital had been built. However, there is a building shown on that map that is not evident on the 1-inch map of 1896, and an examination of it on Google Streetview leads me to consider it to be a prime candidate for the Cottage Hospital. It lies up a short track from the road that was completed in 1897, at Grid Reference NG101895.
If anyone has any information on Manish Victoria Cottage Hospital, a building that is surely of historical significance on Harris, I would be most grateful to learn of it.
Peter, it's December 2016 and I've just tripped across this item. I was born, brought up and live next door to this house. Most locals have always known that the house was intended to be called Victoria Cottage. No one has ever heard of it intended or used as a cottage hospital, in fact its plan arrangement precludes anything other than a normal house. I am convinced that the term "cottage hospital" was a misunderstanding by people "not from here!" Hamish Taylor
ReplyDeleteHi Hamish, thank you for this clarification. The 1901 Census records the District Nurse's address simply as 'Manish Victoria Cottage',with the notable absence of the word 'Hospital', so it appears that on this occasion the obituary writer got it wrong!
ReplyDelete