The cholera hospital today, an image thanks to Andrew Richards, is in a very sad state. But not so long ago it looked very different. In 1986, I went with Romilly Junior School on the yearly excursion, this year wasn’t to be Bristol Zoo, Barry Zoo or Penscynor Wildlife Park – it was to be Flat Holm Island. The excitement about going on a boat to a flat looking island in the Bristol Channel, seemed like a dream at the time. It still does.
Safety positioned on the boat with my buddies David, Paul and John (sounds like a Beatles tribute band), all adorned with our orange life jackets, the adventure would inspire me for the rest of my life. As I would later join the Barry based Flat Holm Project, run out of the Harbour Road Old Police Station, to undertake restoration work on the island a few years later and then organise several excursions with Archaeology Cymru. Finally going down memory lane I would go with my daughter Emily in 2012, where I would meet a great friend in Peter Sampson, the chairman of the Flat Holm Project, who sadly passed away in late 2024.
The building this week is the Cholera Hospital which had been substantially a lot more intact with some of its original slate on its roof than the ruined state it is in today. Back in the 1980’s there were advanced plans to simply place a new roof on the building and fresh slate. Unfortunately the work to reinstate the Cholera Hospital as a usable resource would be excessive today. And Grade II listing status now means you just cant simply put a roof on it anymore without extensive interference from Cadw and cost.
Examining briefly why there is a cholera hospital so far away on Flat Holm is more in practice the best place to put such a building than would immediately present itself in your thoughts. Cholera had plagued South Wales for decades, but much of the faults with water sanitation had been rectified by the later Victorian period. So why the need for a Cholera Hospital? It was far away from the general population, so the risk of infection minimalized. And the new risk was from the spread by sailors from far away locations using the Ports of the South Wales landscape.
As early as 1892, there had been cases of cholera outbreaks on ships coming into Cardiff. So, by 1896, a 12 bed hospital had been constructed on the island. This created two wards based around a central entrance and administration block. What is also of interest is a separate building for a wooden crematorium. Yes, it did go up in flames more than once according to Peter Sampson. How many times the actual hospital was used is up for debate but the nursing staff based there may have been extremely in need of other occupations to keep their minds occupied.
The structure is sizeable with towering brick built chimneys for the fires providing heating. It also has in the central block a first floor. The structure externally was concrete render over the brick and, simply, this provided an instant protection from the elements rather than a lime mortar – that would take time to set. Some stone was used in the gables at the attic space level. Without examining more closely up a ladder, this must be assumed to be the local Carboniferous limestone. From the image, you can see that the attic space was restricted for clearance to give the ground floor plenty of height for air circulation.
For me, after being closed in 1935, the use as a temporary cinema on the island sticks in my mind. Could you image putting a roof on the building today and making it habitable and quietly sat their watching back to back ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy? Total bliss. I forget the reason for its conversion to a cinema, in at least half of the structure was to entertain the military based on the island from 1939 and I think slightly beyond 1945.
I just wanted to thank Peter Sampson for your insight into the island – a great friend who is deeply deeply missed.
