Patients choir

During World War One from 1914-18 the Helensburgh Town Council-owned Hermitage House in Hermitage Park became a military hospital with a capacity for 58 patients who were sent from Stobhall Hospital in Glasgow. The wounded men in their blue uniforms were a familiar sight in the town, being wheeled around the park by their nurses. A number of local ladies and girls helped out in the hospital and the local Red Cross detachment also assisted the trained nurses. Many local girls met their future husbands among the wounded ‘tommies’, and patients were taken on outings in a horse-drawn carriage from Waldie & Co. in Sinclair Street.