Full Recovery

Memories and stories inspired by Pontypool and District Hospital

artRegen 2004

In 1902, a hospital paid for by workers, bosses and public subscription was built in Pontypool.

For the first time, workers in the dangerous local mining and steel industries, and their families, often living in insanitary housing, had access to affordable health care. Over half a century later, the post-war Labour Health Minister, Tredegar-born Aneurin Bevan, used it as the model for what a national health service could achieve. On the centenary of the hospital’s founding, the local community commissioned memorials, including this book, recording its history through the people who worked there or were its patients. It tells the life of the building through the lips of the people who gave it breath.