OLD PLYMOUTH . UK
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©  Brian Moseley, Plymouth
Webpage created: November 26, 2020
Webpage updated: February 07, 2022

        

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UDAL TORRE SANATORIUM

Udal Torre in the Parish of Buckland Monachorum.
From a postcard dated 1908.

Udal Torre Sanatorium was not within the Borough of Plymouth but lay in the Ancient Parish of Buckland Monachorum.

The newly built house was up for sale or rent in February 1905, the agents being Messrs Elliott, Ellis and Company, of the Wilts and Dorset Bank Chambers, Plymouth.  It then sat in about 4¼ acres of ground laid out as two tennis lawns, a croquet lawn, shrubberies and ornamental gardens with a large glass-house, an acre of kitchen garden and an acre of paddock.  The house consisted of a large hall and billiard room, four reception rooms, a kitchen, domestic offices, fifteen bedrooms, two bathrooms, three lavatories,, two storerooms, and a large playroom.  Outside there were a stable for two horses, a harness-room and a coach-house.  The sale included the adjacent house "Hazelcroft", with seven rooms, 'suited for coachman's residence'.

At the 1911 census the House was being used by 37-years-old Cornishman Doctor John Penn Milton as a tuberculosis sanatorium.  In addition to his wife, Mrs Alice Ellen Milton, there were two children, John Penn Milton, aged 10½, who was at school, and 7-years-old Audrey Maude Milton, who was presumably being looked after by the 28-years-old Governess, Miss Constance Dorothy Lawe.  There were two Housemaids, Miss Eveline Elsie Hurditch and Miss Ethel Blanche Triplett; a Parlour Maid, Miss Millicent Lucy Williams; a Children's Maid, Miss Catherine Winifred Brown; a Sick Nurse, Miss Emily Frances Harding; a Cook, widow Mrs Ellen Rogers; and a Kitchen Maid, Miss Florence Marion Robinson. There were eight male patients.  Finally two of Mr Milton's nieces, Muriel Esme Steer, aged 14 years, and Betsie Steer, aged 10½ years, were in residence as students. 

In the process of reorganizing the Plymouth hospitals the Council's Public Health Committee took over the property in 1919 and opened it as a Tuberculosis Sanatorium in April 1920.  It then had just 27 beds and was run by a Medical Superintendent, a Matron, one staff nurse and two probationers.  £1,443 3 shillings and 6 pence was spent on adapting the premises.  Within just a few years the advantage of being open to the moorland air was seen as a disadvantage as the site suffered from strong winds and the Medical Officer of Health wanted it closed down.

Udal Torre Sanatorium was closed when the new buildings at Mount Gould Hospital in Plymouth opened in 1932.

It is believed that the house became a private nursing home but only for a short while as in May 1941 it was demolished to make way for a runway at the Harrowbeer Airfield.

Doctor John Penn Milton lived a long life, which ended at Brighton, Sussex, in 1966, when he was 91 years of age.