This week we are appealing for photos and information on the former hospitals of Bridport.

Before Bridport Community Hospital was built in 1993, the town had a range of different hospitals in different locations.

Port Bredy Hospital was opened in 1948 in the former workhouse on the junction of Barrack Street and Bedford Place.

The workhouse was for the Bridport Poor Law Union formed in 1836. From 1929 it became an infirmary for 114 inmates until the NHS when it became Port Bredy geriatric hospital, which closed in 1996. It was converted into housing in 1999/2000.

Bridport General Hospital opened in 1915 in Park Road, North Allington, on the site of an old isolation hospital on land donated by Colonel Colfox.

A children’s ward and maternity ward were added to the hospital in 1931 and the new extension enabled the hospital to accommodate eight men, 12 women and six children with maternity wards and two private wards.

The hospital closed in 1996 to be replaced by the current Bridport Hospital in Hospital Lane. The site was developed for housing.

Another hospital was St Mary Magdalen Hospital, which is understood to have looked after tuberculosis and diphtheria patients.

If you have any information, photos or memories of the hospitals in Bridport that you would like to share, send them to news@bridportnews.co.uk of Bridport News, Fleet House, Hampshire Road, Weymouth, Dorset, DT4 9XD.