 Meg Brickell supplied the images of the inside of Newbury shown below. Meg worked at Newbury when it was a rehabilitation centre.  " Newbury
once belonged to Sir Harry Platt, an eminent
orthopaedic surgeon at the Manchester Royal
Infirmary. Prior to that it had been a nursing
home for soldiers in the second world war.
Newbury was very large, the front door was on
the side of the house (overlooking some quite
modern purpose built flats). You entered into
the hall with a door to the 'Parlour' on the
left, the office door (sitting room) on the
right and next door was the drawing room, a much
smaller room. Next to the on the right was the
dining room and beyond that an arched doorway
into what was our residents lounge. From the
dining room was a door to the kitchen, then the
scullery, then the servants staircase leading
all the way up to the attic rooms. Much of the
ground floor had been kept somewhat as it was
when it was a private home, the doorways were
original. The first floor however, had been
altered immensely. There were 6 bedrooms and two
bathrooms. There was a flat which the
officer-in-charge before me had lived in. This
was later made into two more bedrooms and the
servants quarters had two bedrooms and a
bathroom. So it was quite large really, the
rooms were very large indeed.
I remember
when the house was being refurbished in 1987 and
the drawing room had been the handicraft room
for the residents - on the wall was a
commendation from Winston Churchill for the fact
that it had been a nursing home - beautiful
thing about A3 size, framed with wonderful
illuminated writing. I took it down to clean it
etc., and discovered behind it a letter from
Winston Churchill dated 1923 it had accompanied
the commendation. The letter was very dirty and
faint and so I re-typed it and stuck both of
them back behind the frame. There was a story
there too about how Newbury had been named -
this was by Arthur Thornton and was written in
South Africa. I don't remember too much about
that. Prior to Newbury becoming an alcoholism
treatment unit it had been a nursing home for
the elderly.
About a year
after I left in 1992 'Newbury' was taken over by
Church Housing (they also owned Plymouth House
on Plymouth Grove). I'm not sure whether or not
they bought Newbury or were just running it for
Manchester Social Services, they certainly
employed the staff."
|