The War Years

At the outbreak of the Second World War Morecambe became an important RAF station and the Midland was requisitioned by the Government for use as a military hospital.

Valuable items were put into store and the interior of the building converted. On the ground floor the dining room became a large ward with some forty beds, while the circular café was adapted to serve as a physiotherapy centre. Other rooms were used for administrative purposes.

Upstairs, two of the suites were turned into operating theatres and the bedrooms used for individual patients. There were also X-ray facilities, a dental surgery and a dispensary. Additional beds were provided in Nissen huts erected in the hotel grounds.

Although there was a mortuary in the basement of the building, very few people actually died in the Midland, the more serious cases being transferred to Lancaster Infirmary.

Towards the end of the war the hospital was kept open a little longer than intended because an airman had cancer and couldn't be moved. He eventually died there.