How the old hospital laundry water tower in Bury St Edmunds outlived the doomed Jacqueline Close homes built nearby

The Suffolk General Hospital as it was then known opened in January 1826 on the site of a former Napoleonic military depot in Chevington Road – soon to be renamed Hospital Road – which once held 10,000 stands of arms.

With the end of the Napoleonic Wars a local committee came about, chaired by the Duke of Grafton, to provide a hospital for Bury and surrounding areas. The Suffolk General Hospital opened on January 4, 1826, funded by public donations, the first of which was £2,000 from Lord Bristol, and to begin with there were 50 in-patients.

Later, the whole hospital was remodelled by St Peter’s Church architect John Hakewell, four large wards having a capacity of 84 in-patients.

A children’s ward opened in April 1914, the year World War One started, and sadly because of this conflict numerous casualties were to be treated at the hospital.

With another World War looming agreements were met to start a further addition in October 1938, to be named after the president of the hospital board, the Marquis of Bristol, The Bristol Annexe. There was also consideration given to one of the hutments near the Bristol Annexe to be used for increased laundry.

With the building of a new hospital at Hardwick, by Johnson & Bailey of Cambridge, which opened in 1974, apart from the annexe (to become Cornwallis Court Residential Care Home) the site was surplus to requirements and was redeveloped. However, one element lingered on, the hospital laundry, which was accessed from Mill Road.

After the war, the hospital management board considered some of the land near the former Thingoe Union Workhouse, which had become St Mary’s Geriatric Hospital, for an expansion of their laundry. Fortunately for them, a knowledgeable local surveyor advised them not to touch it with the proverbial barge pole as the land, eventually put up for auction in 1960, held dark secrets beneath . . . chalk mines!

Thomas George Bullen, a local lime burner, had purchased nearby land called Pinners Folly (I wonder why this name?) in 1845 where the ill-fated Jacquelin Close would be built. These mines had been in use throughout the 19th century and early 20th century, and locals knew of them. However, a London based firm, Tricord Developments, did buy the land and in 1964 desirable three-storey town houses were built with a price range starting from £4,250. A survey of the site had supposedly given the all-clear and the home owners, most with mortgages, moved in. The rest, as they say is history, as we now regretfully know those houses would be compromised by the chalk mines, sadly resulting in demolition save for two of the houses.

As for the Laundry site, further plans were scrapped and the workings directly beneath the hospital site were then supposedly filled with fly ash. Whether this happened is unclear – certainly the suggestion mooted at the time to fill all the mines with fly ash from the Cliff Quay power station in Ipswich was extremely silly to say the least as the poor residents from Jacqueline Close would have to pay for transport and labour, the fly ash free of charge of course!

The laundry is no longer there, having closed down several years ago. Laundry from West Suffolk Hospital is now contracted off site. Amazingly, Jacqueline Close was classed as a brownfield site in Vision 31 the blueprint of how the development of Bury St Edmunds would take place up to 2031.

-- Martyn Taylor is a local historian, author and Bury Tour Guide. His latest book, Bury St Edmunds Through Time Revisited, is widely available.