The ruins of the old Cottage Hospital form part of the social and cultural history of Anguilla but, today, what was formerly the island’s main health facility, for almost 100 years, is unfortunately an eyesore. It stands at the northern corner of the main road exiting The Valley – and leading down to the historic Crocus Bay and just above CeBlue, one of Anguilla’s newest boutique hotels.
There are many retired nurses and other health workers in Anguilla and abroad, who have had their early beginnings of their careers at the Cottage Hospital. According to A Handbook History of Anguilla, by historian Colville Petty, that institution was built in 1927 at a cost of just over 700 pounds sterling. Imagine how many Anguillians, of varying ages, professions and other walks of life, served as health workers there; were born there; were treated as patients; and died there over those many years of what must have been, at the outset, a level of primitive health care!
Medical, nursing services and equipment remained in short supply at the Cottage Hospital all through the late 1960s and beyond. These services and equipment were only significantly improved when, after a number of years, the now greatly enhanced Princess Alexandra Hospital was built at Pope Hill, in the Stoney Ground area.
The ruins of the Cottage Hospital were mainly inflicted by Hurricane Irma in September 2017. While the building was abandoned, as a health facility, when the Princess Alexandra Hospital came into being, it still served a very useful purpose. For a long time it was a satellite technical campus of the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School for students of less academic prowess and probably with certain behavioural challenges. It was called WISE, acronym for Workshop Initiative for Secondary Education. After Irma, WISE was moved to the now expanded Rogers’ Building at Stoney Ground, interestingly enough just east of the Princess Alexandra Hospital.
For a number of years, there was a functioning extension to the east of the Cottage Hospital which served as an additional clinic. Afterwards, it housed the Anguilla Red Cross which later moved to another location on the Stoney Ground Main Road after Irma. The Red Cross now operates at a privately-owned building in The Quarter near ANGLEC’s administration building – another rental accommodation.
The old Cottage Hospital is not an isolated structure. As stated earlier, it is just east of CeBlue which is perched at the island’s highest elevation overlooking Crocus Bay. There are also the clusters of nearby residential areas of Roaches Hill, Limestone Bay, Central Valley, South Valley, Sachasses, North Valley, North Side as well as True Eyes and Brimigen – the last two areas being the farthest away to the north.
The old hospital site is Crown property. There are some schools of thought that, with hundreds of adults and children living in those areas that something ought to be done for the benefit of the public. Can the old Cottage Hospital be eventually restored as an auxiliary health facility, given its history? For instance, why not reconstruct it to serve as a Red Cross and public supply storage and distribution facility and save rental money? Or can it serve as a home for children? Or turned over to progressive persons or organisations for some other needed community service?
What do think?
