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The Vestry Hall in North Street can easily be missed because the red brick building is set back from the road and hidden behind high wooden gates. It was built in 1867 as a Calvinist Baptist chapel but was closed before the end of the century and has since had a variety of uses, for vestry meetings before the formation of the local council, for scholastic, sporting and recreational purposes, and for concerts, meetings and other public entertainments. But it is best remembered as the headquarters of the Red Cross, founded in 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War and revived in 1934, and during the Second World War its members maintained day and night duty here from 1939 to 1945.
There was a plaque within the building marking the event but is now in the small museum at the Red Hall administered by Bourne United Charities. It reads::
The National School next door also became part of Bourne Military Hospital, as it was known, that played such a vital role during the Great War of 1914-18 when soldiers wounded in France were sent here to convalesce and many became part of the community. The Red Cross has since moved out but is still active elsewhere in the town. The Vestry Hall is now privately owned and in 2003 was offered for sale, together with the adjoining house and shop premises, now occupied by the new owners, a firm of accountants which plans to restore the building for use as a private home, thus saving it for posterity. A history of Bourne Military Hospital and a series of old photographs showing the nurses who worked there, together with many of their patients, can be found in A Portrait of Bourne. Return to HOME PAGE MAIN INDEX
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