Bainbridge Isolation Hut/ Hospital Field

Description

When the daughters of an Aysgarth doctor’s assistant caught scarlet fever in 1909, they were isolated in a wooden hut. Some while later, Dr Will Pickles, the medical officer for Aysgarth Rural District Council arranged for the hut with additions to be moved to a field near Bainbridge. In it up to 3 adults or 6 children could be held in isolation for many weeks while they fought the disease. This was preferable to being sent far away to an isolation hospital. With the introduction of Penicillin such highly infectious diseases were no longer a threat and after the Second World War the hut was broken up. A part of it ended up at Worton Hall farm and the field where it once stood at Bainbridge is still called Hospital Field.

Source:

Botheroyd, Eric (1998) ‘Hospital Field. The Streptococcus, the Doctor and the Hospital’ Now Then. No 7 p10