The Cumberland Infirmary

The building in this photo was built in the 1970's but was deemed unsafe due to large spaces between the floors in the 1990's. This posed a fire risk, so a new building was built (one of these privately funded jobbies, with extortionate rates of interest that will never be paid off). 

The 1970's 'Scheme 1'(photo), as it was called, housed many wards and departments and we spent much of our nurse training there. We loved it and the staff we worked with and of course the patients we were caring for.We had four working lifts that never broke down. The medical wards were on the top floor and were nick named 'One Step to Heaven' because they were full of cancer, heart and lung patients.

The new building was complete in 2000, it was built by an architect and the entrance looks like an airport reception. The wards are very small and there is little room around the patients beds. Ironically the fire walls are insufficient! That is when they but up the stud walls for the wards they did not fill the gaps between the top of stud wall and the floor above. Thus giving the fire space to spread should a fire occur. The six lifts are slow and constantly braking down and if we want to change a light bulb we have to get a special contractor to do so at extortionate cost.

Needless to say they are trying to fix the problem. It seems to me they should have stayed put and fixed the 1970's building I the first place!