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AFTER
a couple of years' delay because of "legal technicalities" (Nantwich
Chronicle, April 2007), Nantwich Health Park is making excellent
progress - as the steel framework (below) shows - on a part of the Civic
Hall car park and what used to be the Crowsfoot Centre site.
The £6.5million health centre
is due for completion next summer, when it will house the doctors
and staff from Kiltearn, Tudor and Beam Street medical centres. The
current Beam Street centre is a few yards away to the left of my picture. The three current centres will all close once the health
park opens.
Work began on the building (by
Pochin's of Middlewich) in April. As the current Chairman of Nantwich Town Council (Cllr Bill
McGinnis) told the Nantwich Chronicle at the time: "We were getting so
many new arrivals into the town and all our surgeries were operating
closed lists. People were complaining they couldn't find a doctor."
Central and Eastern Cheshire
Primary Care Trust is the body which has commissioned the 39,000 sq ft
building, designed by Jefferson Sheard Architects for
Henry Davidson Developments of Nottingham,
who procured the site and are developing the scheme.
Unlike the present surgeries
which concentrate on medical care (there is an emergency dental clinic
next to the Beam Street centre), the new park will provide Nantwich
people and those from surrounding villages with NHS services - many of
which patients now have to travel to Leighton Hospital for - dental
care, physiotherapy, podiatry, nursing and midwifery, minor operations,
phlebotomy, and an on-site pharmacy. Not to mention 20 GPs' consulting
rooms and administrative areas. A real one-stop shop.
The minor operations facility
reminds me of the Cottage Hospital which once stood just off Welsh Row
in Welshman's Lane, where the local GPs carried out procedures such as
varicose vein removals. Of course, there are new houses now standing on
that site.
lI
recall that a
vegetable garden stood on the area now occupied by the car
park and the new development. It was just across a lane, nicknamed Dicky's Lane (I'm not sure what it's real name was; and an old map
doesn't help), from Nantwich C of E Primary School - affectionately known
as Dicky's Lane College, of course. This is now the home of a fine
arts auctioneers.
I recall that one boiling hot
summer's afternoon, older pupils were given a gardening lesson. Scheduled classes
were cancelled and we were all taken to the gardens and called upon to
pick produce. I forget what it was but I don't recall getting any of the
produce. I had a feeling that it was a school garden - although I am not
sure why it was; maybe the school meals came from there - and that whatever we picked was getting very ripe in
the sun. |
