So the old Children's Hospital is to go at last! Possibly not before time, as even fifty years ago I remember it being a hotchpotch of dilapidated and prefabricated buildings hidden from dignified view behind the fine fascia of the original redbrick building. The new facility in Eastern Road should certainly prove more serviceable.

I was on intimate terms with the Children's Hospital for the first eight years of my life. Having been born with bilateral talipes (two clubfeet), I spent much of my first year as an inpatient, during which time the noted Australian orthopaedic surgeon Walter (Nick) Laurence performed feats of magic to restore my feet to virtually normal. I consider that I owe Mr Laurence a debt of gratitude greater than any I owe to any other person, apart perhaps from my mother who bravely nursed me through this period.

I subsequently visited the Hospital many times as an outpatient for progress checks and for physiotherapy and electrotherapy on the leg muscles, plus at least one further operation, at age seven, for a tendon transplant. A final inpatient stay was at age eight for removal of my tonsils, as was then still standard practice in cases of severe inflammation.

Time and tide wait for no man, as they say, and now the old Hospital will be no more. It would be great if the original redbrick building, or at least its frontage, could be saved and incorporated into whatever new development is on the cards, but I doubt this will happen. At least we have the fine photomontage by JJ Waller elsewhere on this website to remind us of the much-loved old facility.

A year or so ago, in a fit of nostalgia, I "Googled" Mr Laurence to see if, after fifty years, I could find out more about this fine surgeon to whom I owe so much, and discovered that in the mid 1990s he was killed in a tragic accident at the waste recycling site in Portslade, being then in his late 80s, long retired but still fit and active. With his passing, and that of the Royal Alexandra Children's Hospital, I'll have only my memories of an invaluable facility and a fine man.

I remember this wonderful old hospital with fondness and the wonderful staff that worked there. I spent much of my childhood on Taaffe Ward with asthma from 1970 - 78. There was a wonderful large bear that sat on the wall at the bottom of the ward and the old bathrooms had wooden lids on the baths. It also had a wonderful garden where a long bench swing existed. I spent many a time as I was recovering swinging on that  (happy memories). So sorry that it is to be destroyed by the bulldozers.