Memories of Fryern Hill Hospital

PREFACE
Mrs Clara Fooks died on 20th January, 1984, aged 83. Her parents, Henry and Alice Searle, had moved to Eastleigh with the transfer of the Carriage Works in the 1980s, and Clara was born in Cranbury Road, the youngest of eight children. She left the Crescent School and went into “service” at the age of 15, being for a while at Chawton House in the village where Jane Austen lived. When she was 21, she married George Fooks and they lived for two years in two rooms at Locks Heath before moving toFryern Hill Hospital, where George had obtained the job of “Porter and Gardener”, to which was later added the task of driving the ambulance, horse-drawn at first. They were a happy couple and helped to cheer the patients sent to the Isolation Hospital.Their mode of transport changed from cycles to motor cycle and sidecar, and then to a little AustinSeven Tourer bought for £7. Being a professional gardener, George soon transformed the Hospital surroundings from a wilderness into attractive gardens, supplying both vegetables and flowers. Among other things, Clara was
responsible for the laundry, carried out in a large and cold wash house at the Hospital.