Photo: Steve Odell

General photograph of the site of Wimpole Park looking north east. The clump of trees is visible in both images.

See also:
Site Index
Wimpole Park Photo c1950 (below)

Wimpole Park Hospital Complex, c1950
Photograph contributed by Chris Pluck

Image: c1950, summer scene, looking due south east. The quality of the original image is rated as 'poor'.
Location: On the Wimpole Hall Estate (now National Trust) just inside the Arrington Gates.

There is a large flat area of arable pasture situated just inside the Arrington Gates to Wimpole Hall, a large country-house in Cambridgeshire now owned by the National Trust.

Between 1944 and 1960 the pasture, or Wimpole Park as it became named, was host in turn to an American Hospital treating army casualties of war, a squatters camp, an experimental teacher training college, a community school, emergency local authority housing, and lastly a US Air Force Hospital best remembered for being the 'place-of-birth' for hundreds of Americans.

During 1959/1960, the USAF Hospital was decommissioned and all the buildings and roads were completely removed. Wimpole Park was returned to arable pasture (see smaller picture).

The site in the photograph appears untidy and unkempt so it is assumed the picture was taken after the Training College closed in 1950 but before the arrival of the 7510 USAF Hospital in 1952.