Falkirk man Ian Brown is seeking the help of NEN readers as he tries to piece together the history of Scotland’s World War One hospitals and ambulance trains. Can you help?
I’m now into my fourth year researching those WW1 hospitals in Scotland which received sick and wounded soldiers and sailors by Ambulance Train direct from Southampton (Army) or Invergordon (Navy). I have found journey information on these quite scarce, especially for the Naval trains, and what little there is can be quite ambiguous or confusing, to say the least.
In your local area’s History:
The Royal Victoria Hospital, Craigleith Road; Crewe Road Children’s Home; and Craigleith Poorhouse Hospital, Crewe Road became No. 2 Military Hospital, Edinburgh. The main site was Craigleith Hospital which became today’s Lothian Health Service Western General Hospital.
Leith Public Health Hospital, Ferry Road (just east of Crewe Toll) was formerly Granton Naval Hospital. It later became Lothian Health Service’s Northern General Hospital which is now closed. Safeway and Lothian Health Service’s Ferryfield House now share the former hospital site.
All of these hospitals were linked by Crewe Road (now Crew Road South) and the former Caledonian Railway line from Edinburgh’s Princes Street station to Leith North station, which closed in the 1960’s. The nearest passenger station on the line was Craigleith (on Craigleith Road) but the station platforms were below road level and as motor ambulances couldn’t get down onto these platforms, this station would be seen as unsuitable. Ambulance Trains carried around 100 patients and around half – the more seriously sick or wounded – required to be carried by stretcher from the train to the waiting ambulance. ‘Walking wounded’ could also have difficulty with stairways. (This is where it starts to get confusing!)
‘The History of Western General Hospital’ by Martin Eastwood & Anne Jenkinson states the first Army patients arrived ‘at Craigleith station’ by train on 14th August 1914, while those from ‘the South’ went to Craiglockhart station – which was on a completely different railway and its platforms were also below street level.
What the authors don’t include in their history is that Craigleith Hospital had its own railway platform, (and its own Army Ambulance Train). The platform was specially built by the Army early August 1914, but few trains seem to have run to or stopped there because ‘the lighting was insufficient’ so it could only be used in daylight hours. This is strange. Most Ambulance Trains arrived at their destination in the early hours, during darkness. The first train from Southampton with wounded for Craigleith ran to Princes Street ‘instead’:
Monday 28th September 1914 – First Ambulance Train arrived Princes Street station at 2am. It had departed Southampton 12 noon Sunday and would have gone direct to Craigleith to the specially built platform behind the Hospital had it been daylight, but for the insufficient lighting on the platform. (Scotsman)
I have so far been unable to find exactly where the hospital platform was sited or why proper lighting wasn’t installed. The railway line between ‘Craigleith Road and Crewe Toll’ passed 400 yards west of the hospital. The only road access to this railway line was off Ferry Road, west of Crewe Toll, to sidings then known as ‘Crew sidings’, but there is no record that a station or platform was ever built there.
A ‘Crew siding’ does appear in the Red Cross records for Naval Ambulance Trains: Edinburgh No. 1 Branch dealt with 40 Ambulance Trains there. Crew Sidings are a short distance away from Granton Naval Hospital, but Craigleith Hospital is a good bit further away along Crewe Road (unless a ‘short-cut’ was built from the south end of the sidings onto the road running directly to the back of Craigleith Hospital, but I have no evidence of that). Edinburgh No. 1 Branch was responsible for transferring patients from Ambulance Trains and motor ambulances to both of these Hospitals, but none of the Army Ambulance Trains are shown as having been dealt with at Crew siding, or Craigleith platform.
I was wondering if any of your local Historians can shed any further light on this?
You can contact Ian at ian.brown4429
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