THE Princess Royal visited Fishponds’ Glenside Hospital Museum today as part of its 40th anniversary celebrations.
Princess Anne met volunteers, trustees, researchers and supporters of the museum, which is one of only three in the country dedicated to the history of mental health treatment and stands in the former hospital’s Victorian chapel building.
Among those she met was May Tanner, whose story was told in the museum’s Answering the Call exhibition, which celebrates the nurses who came to Bristol and other parts of the UK in the post-war decades to work for the NHS.
May, who worked in Bristol hospitals for more than 30 years, was pleased to see the museum and the Answering the Call exhibition in the spotlight.
She said: “It’s good to share my experience after all these years. I was in my 20s when I came – I’m 92 now!”
The Princess also met the daughter and son-in-law of Dr Donal Early, a former Glenside Hospital doctor. Dr Early founded both the museum and the Industrial Therapy Organisation, a non-profit company which gave patients the opportunity to work in factories and workshops, and was visited by the Princess back in 1969.
Before, leaving the Princess was presented with a posy by Isabella Hammett, aged nine, and three-year-old Evelyn Moulding, granddaughters of former Glenside Hospital worker Ann Blannin, one of the 24 volunteer artists who worked on the Answering the Call project (pictured above).
