The Hospital Grounds

St. Nick's Hospital

I remember the Hospital grounds more than the gardens, which were situated further down towards the hospital building. This was the wonderfully overgrown play area that we kids accessed by crawling under the high wire fence that ran around the entire perimeter of these grounds.

It was an out of bounds place. We felt that when we played there we were exploring a forbidden land. This added somewhat to the mystery of this overgrown and tangle weed place.

It had lovely big old sprawling oak trees growing at the southern end. There were lots of other well-established large trees and shrubs situated and dotted around the fence line. In the middle of all this was a big expanse of very long grasses, of all varieties, along with many other kinds of small shrubs. It truly was a wonderful place to play in, for hide and seek, or to make secret huts in amongst, or just to look at and explore nature.

Yes indeed, a very special place, undisturbed by the public. A hidden and very quiet place, to let our young imaginations act out their childhood dreams.
In our very own secret garden.

Colin Weightman