Looking back at hospital’s early days

For just over 40 years, the William Harvey Hospital in Kennington Road, Willesborough, has served Ashford and the wider towns and villages well.

Previously, east Kent had an array of smaller hospital premises and sites with larger hospitals at Canterbury and Margate.

Current hospital management, the East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, and its predecessors have progressively expanded the Ashford site on land originally known as Lacton Green four-fold.

But in today’s climate and with a cash-strapped NHS, authorities in the medical sector have suggested centralising services from a ‘super hospital’ site in Canterbury, with a developer offering to build the shell of the site in the city in return for planning permission for 2,000 homes.

Today’s William Harvey is a far cry from the original hospital which partly opened in 1978 and was fully operational by 1979.

The hospital has been extensively extended over the decades to provide the most up-to-date services for the locality, though an ever-changing NHS has seen some appointment slots only available at other hospital sites within the trust.

The pomp and ceremony of the exciting new hospital was appropriately downplayed following the murder of Greek-Cypriot children’s nurse Niki Mina in ducting underneath the hospital in December 1979.

Hospital porter Steven Edwards was charged with her murder and found guilty.

Today, hospital bosses are undecided on the future of services in the locality and have recently claimed that these new plans may take years to come to fruition.

This week’s Remember When features a trio of images all from 1979 showing the new hospital in the early days of its operation. ■ Do you have any photographs or slides of old Ashford you would be willing to loan me to enable them to be scanned for possible feature in the Kentish Express?

Please don’t delay, feel free to get in touch.

Write to me: Steve Salter, Kentish Express Remember When, Unit 4, Park Mall Shopping Centre, Ashford, Kent, TN24 8RY.

Email me: rememberwhen_ kmash@hotmail.co.uk

Follow me on Twitter: @SteveKMAshford.

Or you can also leave a telephone message for me with brief details by calling the Kentish Express on 01233 623232.