Victoria Hospital was situated not far out of town ,just off Highfield Lane.It is now a housing complex.I remember singing Christmas carols there on Christmas Eve with the Parish Church Choir. Then we were invited to the nurses quarters for pop and mince pies.
The hospital started life as a small cottage hospital in 1876. It had 8 beds, a matron and one young girl to help her.Following a series of extensions and improvements the name Victoria Hospital was adopted in honouur of th Queen's 1897 Jubilee. It was demolished in 1972.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1959-64

Current location (optional) Keighley

Go to Streetmap uk and type in Cartmel Road - you'll find the site of the Victoria Hospital between Cartmel Road/Drewry Road/Redcliffe Street and Highfield Lane. The entrance was a sweeping drive that entered the site from Redcliffe Street, opposite Highfield Secondary and Infants' Schools. The building was from the mid nineteenth century, I would guess - grand, ornate and Victorian. Inside the lino corridors were spotless and it smelled of disinfectant everywhere. I remember it as a huge place - but it must've been quite small in fact, judging from the footprint of the site it once occupied. Alan Britten may remember chumming me there when I dropped a paving stone on my leg in 1954. We'd been playing on the bit of wasteground where the number 2 bus terminated in those days - kind of an anti-clockwise roundabout at one end of Calver Avenue. Anyway, they stored the paving slabs there and we had decided to make them into a boat! I dropped one on the left leg and bear the scar to this day! This led to lots of trips to the hospital and four weeks off school which was spent, as I recall, reading comics, eating packets of Seabrook's crisps and getting fat.

OK. We've established where the Victoria Hospital was situated. It was up Highfield lane. But what about the Fever Hospital? I have vague recollection of an ambulance collecting a neighbour for onward delivery to t' fever hospital in Keighley. Taken away on a stretcher wrapped in red blankets suffering from Scarlet fever. [or was it diphtheria?] The house was disinfected by burning sulphur candles and washing bed linen in lysol. I remember being scared stiff that it would happen to me next. The name Morton Banks rings a bell.Is that where the Infectious Disease Hospital was sited?

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 45 - 50

Current location (optional) Norfolk

Dennis, the isolation hospital was at the top of Hospital Road in Riddlesden. I can remember playing cricket against Prince Smith & Stells at their ground down Worth Village. It was a very hot day and whilst fielding I saw my Dad collapse off his seat. He was taken to the Isolation Hospital. We visited him but could only stand outside and talk to him through the window. It turned out that he had low blood pressure, but they didn't take any chances in those days. The hospital is now demolished.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1959-64

Current location (optional) Keighley

David, you are spot on. Its names have been:
Morton Banks Fever Hospital (1896 - 1916)
Keighley War Hospital (1916 - 1918)
Keighley Infectious Diseases Hospital (1918 - ?)
Morton Banks Pre-Convalescent Unit (? - 1972)
I couldn't find details of the ? change of name date. It closed in 1972 - does anyone know what is on the site now?
Wasn't Victoria hospital a convalescent hospital/home in the 50's and 60's?
Happy New Year to all, by the way!!

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-65

If you look on our own website under the following link, you'll see the location of Victoria Hospital on the town's 1950 map, below the playing fields where Keighley Albion still play:

http://www.kbgs.com/keighley.jpg

Just drove past the old site this lunchtime and mentioned it to my son.

I also remember walking there in the summer of 1956 after I'd jumped from the branch of the copper beech tree just inside Lund Park gates and broke my arm.

Fortunately that was only the second time that I visited the hospital - the first being when I was born on July 5th 1948 - the first NHS baby to be delivered in Keighley.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 59 - 66

Current location (optional) Embsay

Still on the topic of old Keighley institutions there was t'Open Air School on Braithwaite Avenue. Still there?

Yes, Braithwaite Open Air school is still there. Opened in September 1929, the classrooms could be opened up to the sun and so it got it's name.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1959-64

Current location (optional) Keighley

re the Open Air School- I went there for 12 months and sat the County Minor Exam while there.Cheers.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 47-51

Current location (optional) Auckland

When I worked as a cleaner at West Yorkshire bus station, some local villain had a scam to rob the visitors to Keighley Vic. The bus would be parked up early in Cooke Stret alongside the Old Man's Park, ready for a departure which would get passengers to the hospital for evening visiting time. Passengers would arrive, seat themselves and wait for the bus crew to officiate. One bloke turned up with a ticket machine and cash bag, collected the fairs and then scarpered. I think he got nicked the next time he tried it.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 52-60

Not wishing to impugn travelling showmen, it was fares he collected!!

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 52-60

There was one more hospital in Keighley. That was
St Johms up Fell Lane. It was formely known as the County Hospital and was where I was born. Now of course demolished to make way for houses. I remember going to the hospital's boiler house with a wheelbarrow to collect cinders for my father's paths in his allotment next door. Our milkman Mr Haigh had a horse and cart and we visited his establishment with the wheelbarrow to collect his horse's droppings (how polite) for my father's allotment.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1959-64

Current location (optional) Keighley

I can also remember the boiler house with the large 'Lancashire' boilers. The original stone gate-posts are the only remaining features of the hospital.

There used to be some old wooden huts where patients suffering from chest infections were housed opposite the allotments. One evening some of use were 'working' on a friends father's allotment when we decided to have a fire. Not much flame but a hell of a lot of smoke which drifetd over the wall and across and into the wooden huts - not too popular with the nurses and patients!

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 59 - 66

Current location (optional) Embsay

I guess a good few of us (including me) were born in Victoria Hospital, in my case by emergency Caesarian operation at 3.45 in the morning, with snow outside piled several feet high. (Oh dear its almost the big '60'!)
I visited St John Hospital many times. Lund Park Church choir sang hymns around the wards about once a month on Sunday evenings. IT was rathe rmonotonius as the inmates nearly all requested 'Abide with me' and 'I need thee every hour'. (Probably wouldnt be allowed now because of MRSA threat!). My(paternal) grandfather was in there for a good while before he died in 1963.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

David Boddy's mention of St John's Hospital on Fell Lane, brings to mind the happy events of the birth of my two daughters in the early/mid sixties. I am also informed that my maternal grandfather sadly died there in the late thirties, suffering from the 'dreaded DT's'.
During 2006, an aerial photograph of St John's Hospital appeared in the Keighley News in the 'Down Memory Lane' section and I have a copy of this on my computer which I will pass on to our Webmaster for inclusion on the website.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1945-50

Current location (optional) Keighley

Further to an earlier comment on this 'thread', concerning the 'Fever Hospital' at Morton Banks, a photograph appeared in the 'Down Memory Lane' section of the Keighley News earlier this year, showing a picture of 1WW troops at this hospital. A 'meaty' description of the hospital's work during that period is supplied, as usual, by Ian Dewhirst. For your intrest, I shall forward a copy of the article/photo to our Webmaster and ask him to include the piece on our website.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 45-50

Current location (optional) Keighley

See Morton Banks Hospital

Re-visiting the site after some time away I read this thread on the old hospital which closed in 1970. I too was born here (by Caesarian also)on 17th September 1948 although parents lived at Aireville Mount, Sandbeds. I've sent a picture card to Chris taken from the Web for entry on our site.

Strange that so many of us appear to have been born by caesarean section.

I was also - the first National Health baby in Keighley - at 11.30 am on July 5th 1948.

I always thought that caesarean section was a new phenomenon.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 59 - 66

Current location (optional) Embsay

Well, I predate you two by a year and a bit. I dont know how new the technique was, but they knew in advance I was going to have to be born that way, as Mum lost her first baby at birth in Dec 1945, because of 'space' considerations. I understand they waited right to the last minute when I was about to be born naturally, then there was a mad rush to get Mum to the hospital to do the caesarian.
There had been heavy snow for several days, it was piled up a few feet high at the side of the road, and they only just got to the hospital in time. My sister was born the same way in 1951.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

The technique is, by definition, at least 2000 years old - though I guess mothers didn't start surviving the operation until the advent of effective anaesthesia and sterilisation of equipment.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-65

Current location (optional) Leeds

I was told that birth by caesarian section meant that: pressure on the skull of the infant was significantly less than that which was experienced in a normal birth; there was less chance of intellectual impairment for the foetus; the reduced pressure in a caesarian birth produced children with appreciably more attractive (bonnier) features. I saw little evidence of this either in the classroom - and certainly not in the school yard during my sojourn at KBGS..... unless you had a different experience.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 52-60

Well, arent we not two handsome chaps?........

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

The benefits of the Caesarean are many.
The difficult opening of the pelvis to let the child exit can be so obstructed, for many reasons, that the baby will experience lack of oxygen during the birth trauma. Hence Caesarean section actually benefits the child because the head is not distorted by passage through the pelvis and birth channel and in addition has instant access to breathing air. This can have an impact on the brain and intellect. It does not necessarily mean that the child will be bright but certainly its access to oxygen will mean that there is relatively little loss of brain.
Being so endowed the child delivered by Caesarean section will no doubt be able to recognise the 'double negative'in 'Aren't we not a beautiful lot!' when it sees one. Arthur