Bevendean Hospital was the Brighton TB hospital in the 1950s and had a rather gloomy reputation in those pre-penicillin days. Many patients did not survive.   My mother was in there and was cured with - amongst other treatment - the help of a daily bottle of Guiness provided free by the NHS!

I and my two older brothers were in Bevendean Hospital in the 1930s with diptheria. I was only 5 years old and there were about 8 other children in the ward .We only saw the nurses at meal times so us kids used to wander in and out of the empty wards on our floor. What I can remember is the smell of Ronock floor polish and carbolic soap

I too was a patient in the Bevendean Hospital, in 1956 for 3 months, I remember the doors and windows were always open and birds flew in and out all day long. Fortunately Streptomycin was discovered that year and I was able to recover fully. We were wheeled outside to enjoy the fresh air every morning but were not allowed to lay in the sun.

My elder sister was a patient at Bevendean Hospital in the early 1950s with pleurisy. Only our mother was allowed at her bedside. My younger sister and I had to stand some distance away. She used to wave to us from an open window though, as we left after visiting hours were over. She made a full recovery thank goodness.

My mother remarried in around 1968-9 and my brother Martin and I moved from our home town of Crawley to our new stepfather's home which was called "the Cottage" and was situated in the grounds of the Bevendean Hospital at the Bear Road entrance to the hospital. My stepfather was the Chief Engineer for the hospital, and my mother also worked there as well in charge of supplying the wards with the medical paraphenalia. We attended Coombe Road Primary School and I was a member of the church choir just a few hundred yards away (cannot recall its name now). We loved being the only kids "on the block" as it were, it was like having a huge creepy mansion, ripe for years of adventures which we explored every nook and cranny of. We also took part in all the Xmas nativity plays that the staff layed on each year, and I went from being a novice angel to being a shepherdess and finally Mary herself. When I moved up to Moulsecoomb Secondary school I used to come home for my lunch (unbelievably) so walked up and down the length of Bear Road four times a day! Where at the bottom on Lewes Road I would catch a bus to school but often walked home with my best friends Sharon Lower and Sharon Fox who lived along the highway, near Jacobs Ladder, and also in the army barracks married quarters, as her father was a soldier there.
We had the huge cricket field to the side of the Cottage, where we invited all our school friends and local kids to play on our own private playing field. They would all have to climb over the jagged edges of the perimeter wall to the grounds by climbing first on to the big metal grit container that was situated at the forked end of Ladysmith Road and Coombe Road. I believe it was there to hold a ready supply of grit for whenever the weather became freezing cold to help the drivers slither their way up what must have seemed like a mountain ski slope, because of the steep angle that Bear Road is famous for no doubt! I too used to visit the horse stables at the very top of Bear Road and spent years fantasizing about owning my own pony one day.
We eventually moved back to Crawley again in 1976 and years later thought on reflection about our surroundings back then and realised that we had been totally surrounded by the dead! We had the the hospital's morgue to the left of us just yards away, and in front of us was the separating wall to the Memorial Gardens, to the right when you crossed the road was the cemetery and the other remaining side was the cricket field. So all in all it was probably a good thing that I hadn't thought of this fact as a child because there was a "Grey Lady" that was said to haunt the Hospital. It still makes the hair on my neck stand up to think of it even now. Though I was sad to see that our old home and surroundings had gone when I returned for one of my many visits and drove past all those memories of yesteryear in Bevendean.