At the outbreak of war, one of Canterbury’s two first-aid posts was at the Technical School on Longport Street (the other was in the Council Depot on Kingsmead Road). The Technical School was house in a late eighteenth-century building, which had, until very recently, been the Kent and Canterbury Hospital (and was therefore, presumably, an obvious choice; the Kent and Canterbury Hospital had recently (1937) moved to a new site). The post therefore went by the varied denominators of ‘Old Hospital’, ‘Longport’ and ‘Technical School. ’By late November 1939 a decontamination hut had been erected at the entrance, for patients entering the post. During the Second World War the various old hospital buildings provided accommodation for a range of civil-defence facilities. On 9 September 1939 provision was made for a kind of ‘rest-centre’ in several rooms of the Institute. This may have been an unusually early instance of this kind of provision, prefiguring the more organised rest and feeding centre organisation of circa late 1940. In 1941, a Rest Centre was listed at the Institute, with space for 200 persons – it is not yet clear whether it had been in such use continuously since 1939. (Provision may subsequently have lapsed, but been reinstated after the destruction of other Rest Centres in the ‘Baedeker’ raid of 1942.) An emergency feeding centre also operated here in 1941 and/or 1942. In late September 1939 the Canterbury Emergency Committee adopted the former mortuary, and an adjoining garage, of the former hospital as a civil-defence mortuary. These had only fairly recently gone out of use and required only minor repairs. Plans for the adaption were approved at the end of the month. In late 1941 the viewing room was redecorated and provided with oak crosses. Following the establishment of the Canterbury Nodal Point, an Emergency Hospital operated here alongside the first-aid-post. This seems to have been the main hospital for casualties requiring major surgery. It was staffed by surgical teams and nursing staff from the Kent and Canterbury Hospital. The first-aid post, itself, briefly had a military role, in the early months of the Canterbury Fortress, as the regimental aid post for No. 1 Group of the Fortress garrison (this seems to have lapsed by early 1942); there were stretcher parties and two ambulance cars in operation here. The last of the old Kent and Canterbury Hospital buildings were demolished in 1971.
Owner : Private
Publicly accessible : Yes
How accessed for survey :
Tourism Potential :
Condition : Destroyed
Date of visit :

Canterbury City Council Emergency Committee, 01/01/39, Canterbury City Council Emergency Committee Minute Books 1 to 6 (Unpublished document). SKE14756.

Canterbury City Council Emergency Committee, 01/01/39, Canterbury City Council Emergency Committee Minute Books 1 to 6 (Unpublished document). Ske14756.