Page 8 - The Princess Mary's Hospital 40pp book.pdf

The Princess Mary’s Hospital, RAF Akrotiri (TPMH): 1963 –2013
Design and construction
TPMH was designed by architect Alister Gladstone MacDonald, who was born in 1898 as the eldest son of James Ramsey MacDonald, Britain’s first labour Prime Minister.
The builders were Taylor Woodrow and Medcon Construction Ltd of Nicosia, using a workforce of 600, including many from Akrotiri village.
On 1 June 1961 work started on the new hospital build. The foundation stone was laid on 7 September 1961. The construction of the new building, using reinforced concrete with built-in earthquake protection, took less than two years to complete, at a cost of just over £1,000,000.
The hospital was designed for 155 beds in eight wards, seven in two four-storey wings running north and west (forming the arms of a letter L), and the eighth on the second floor of a separate wing providing spacious pathology and maxillofacial departments on the ground floor. There were two operating theatres with an adjacent recovery ward, and a central sterile supply department. There was an x-ray department and two maternity wards, one of which contained a premature baby unit. The maternity department was to be the busiest part of the hospital throughout most
of its existence. An outpatient department offered all the main specialist clinics, and there was a casualty department with patient access both
by road and via the hospital’s own helicopter landing ground. A central
hospital garden was laid out, and a Flame of the Forest tree gifted to the hospital by the people of the Greek island of Kos was planted outside the outpatient department. This tree was reputedly descended from the tree that Hippocrates used for shade while treating patients.
N
Helipad
Pathology Laboratory
Wards 4 and 6
X-Ray
Physio Outpatients
TPMH. Commemorative photograph taken on the occasion of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, 29 June 2012, with hospital staff forming the words TPMH (bottom left), and location overlay
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Welfare
Theatres