For centenary, UK home becomes WWI hospital

One of them, the Dunham Massey estate outside Manchester, is usually a display of the wealth enjoyed by the Stamford family who lived there for generations until 1976. It is now run as a museum by the National Trust, a charity looking after many of Britain's stately homes and gardens.

At the height of World War I, the Stamford family turned the house into a military hospital - as Britain's 7,000 official hospital beds were completely overrun by casualties returning from the trenches. At the end of the war, all the hospital beds and equipment, along with huge amounts of paper documentation, were put into storage and largely forgotten about.

Until now. As part of the WWI centenary the National Trust has turned Dunham Massey back into the way it looked during the war, complete with original hospital beds, recreation room, a makeshift operating theatre and details of the soldier patients' names and injuries.

'Doing their bit'

"There were people going out to the front fighting, putting their lives on the line for their king and country and for the Empire. So people at home wanted to do their bit as well, and this was one way of doing it," said Katie Taylor, the Dunham Massey House and Collections Manager.

"The family removed all the contents, rolled up the carpets, removed the fine paintings, took down the sparkling chandelier from this space and put 25 beds in here," she explained, showing DW around the house's Edwardian drawing room which functioned as the main ward.

"This house was offered by Lady Stamford to the Red Cross. Lady Stamford had worked and volunteered with the Red Cross for a long time, and she travelled the North West inspecting other houses that were being offered as home hospitals," said Taylor.

"There were over 3,000 hospitals volunteered for hospital beds - some big houses, like this, and there were small Victorian villas, two or three bedroom houses, that were being offered as well."

Operating at the bottom of the stairs

Unusually, what became known as the Stamford Military Hospital at Dunham Massey also contained an operating theater. It was situated at the foot of the house's grand staircase because there was a small bathroom with a sink and running water adjacent to that space.

"They operated we think once a week roughly," explained Katie Taylor.

"What we've recreated here in this incredibly dark spot of the house is an operation we know took place here."

The soldier on the table that day was Private William Johnstone, who had arrived from the frontline with two pieces of shrapnel embedded in his brain. A doctor carried out the operation with the assistance of Lady Jane, the daughter of the house and a trained nurse.

In an audio recording from 1980, Lady Jane recalled what it was like assisting during that operation at the foot of the house's grand staircase:

"He had a bullet in his brain. This had to be got out. Once they'd made the hole into the brain, I was given the job of shining a torch right into it.

"And I remember being awfully interested, because you'll remember you've always heard about the term ‘grey matter' - and I saw the brain sort of pulsating, and it was grey. That's why it's called grey matter. So I held the torch in front, and saw the bullet being extracted by the surgeon. It was very interesting."

Upper class accommodation for working class men

Nearly 300 soldiers were treated at the Stamford Military Hospital for conditions ranging from machine-gun bullet wounds, gas poisoning and shell shock to trench foot.

There were no officers, which meant most of the patients would have come from the working classes, totally unaccustomed to the trappings of an upper class family like the Stamfords.

"We've got a lot of archive information, letters and souvenirs the soldiers left to the family, and there is an awful lot of gratitude for what happened here. Just simple things that we don't think about today: that the house was lit by electric light, which probably none of them would have seen before in a domestic house. Or the fact that when they were here they all had their own bed," the National Trust's Katie Taylor told DW.

The Stamford Military Hospital exhibition at Dunham Massey runs until November 2016.