Doctor Doctor — Memories of Healthcare in Lostock Hall
130 years of healthcare, community and memories
The history of healthcare in Lostock Hall is closely connected with the history of the wider community — including the former Walton-le-Dale Urban District, within whose boundaries the village and its medical services developed.
One of the most interesting projects to record this history was Doctor Doctor, a community heritage project led by Lostock Hall Medical Centre.
The project was devised by David Pearson, Practice Manager at Lostock Hall Medical Centre, as part of the practice’s plans for its move to Dardsley. The intention was not simply to record the history of a medical practice, but to explore the building’s much wider significance in the life of the community and the changing nature of healthcare over more than a century.
Dardsley has a particularly interesting place in the story. Built as a doctor’s surgery in the nineteenth century, it became associated with generations of local doctors and patients and remained a place of healthcare long after its original construction.
A community heritage project
Doctor Doctor was supported by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, in partnership with Lancashire County Council Museums. The project also contributed to the national NHS at 70 – Story of Our Lives programme, working with the University of Manchester’s NHS at 70 project.
The project team included Belinda Scarlett, Project Co-ordinator, and Gill Coward, Researcher. Local people were invited to contribute their memories, photographs, documents and objects relating to healthcare and everyday life.
Among those thanked by the project were Sheila Tyrer, Dorothy Blackburn, Gillian Bennett, Keith Coles, Graham Hayes and Faye Cohen, together with participants in the films produced as part of the project.
The resulting material provides something rather different from a conventional institutional history. It records healthcare as it was actually experienced: doctors making home visits, families knowing their local practitioners, the changing buildings in which medicine was practised, and the relationships between doctors, patients and the communities they served.
Dr Sydney Cohen
For me, the project has an additional personal connection.
Dr Sydney Cohen was my first GP.
The Doctor Doctor project records Faye Cohen as the widow of Dr Sydney Cohen. Her contribution therefore provides a particularly direct link with one of the doctors whose name was part of the local medical story.
It is a small but rather remarkable reminder of how easily the history of a place can connect with our own memories. A name which might otherwise appear in a list of former local doctors turns out to belong to someone who was part of my own childhood — and his wife subsequently became one of the people helping to preserve the history of healthcare in the area.
Beyond the surgery
The research undertaken for Doctor Doctor has also uncovered material about the wider social history of Lostock Hall.
Among the subjects explored was the 1892 typhoid outbreak, researched from contemporary reports by members of the project team. Such material demonstrates that the history of healthcare cannot really be separated from the history of housing, sanitation, employment, family life and the physical environment.
That is particularly relevant when looking at historic communities such as Lostock Hall and Walton-le-Dale. The boundaries between villages, districts and medical practices have changed over time, while the people who lived within them continued to share many of the same services, workplaces, schools, churches and family connections.
A useful local-history resource
Although Doctor Doctor was centred on Lostock Hall Medical Centre, its subject is considerably wider than the history of one practice.
It provides an example of community heritage being gathered from the people who actually experienced it, preserving memories which might otherwise disappear. The photographs, oral histories, documents and research are valuable not only for the history of medicine but for understanding everyday life in the Preston area during the nineteenth, twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
For Walton-le-Dale, the connection is particularly significant because the development of Lostock Hall and Dardsley took place within the historic administrative landscape of the Walton-le-Dale Urban District Council.
The story of Dardsley is therefore part of a much larger local story — one in which administrative boundaries, medical practices and communities have changed, while the buildings and memories left behind can still provide a connection with the past.
Further research
The Doctor Doctor project website contains further information, photographs, memories and research relating to healthcare and the history of Lostock Hall.
Project: Doctor Doctor — Memories of Healthcare in Lostock Hall
Project partners: Lostock Hall Medical Centre; Lancashire County Council Museums
Project Co-ordinator: Belinda Scarlett
Researcher: Gill Coward
Heritage funding: Heritage Lottery Fund
The project is also associated with the NHS at 70 – Story of Our Lives programme at the University of Manchester.
This page is intended as a starting point for further research. The history of Dardsley, Lostock Hall’s doctors and the relationship between Lostock Hall and the former Walton-le-Dale Urban District remains an interesting area for local-history research.
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Visit the “Doctor Doctor — Memories of Healthcare in Lostock Hall” website:
https://www.doctordoctormemories.co.uk
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