New play honours Buxton Museum as a Canadian hospital during WW1

Playwright and historian Leslie Oldfield has written a new play, A Crimson Maple Leaf, and will be performed next month during the fringe festival.

He said: “This play is about the thousands of wounded Canadian soldiers who were evacuated to Buxton during the First World War and put in the hotels which were virtually all converted to hospitals.

“The play concerns both soldiers and nurses who were suffering from PTSD and many Canadian nurses were confined to Northwood House on Corbar Road and were diagnosed as suffering from hysteria.”

Buxton Museum used to be the Peak Hydro Hotel and was turned into a Special Canadian Hospital in 1915.

On the Buxton Museum’s website it states: “The museum was built in about 1875 as a hydropathic hotel, offering cold water treatments.

“By 1915 the Peak Hotel was up for sale.

“The Canadian Red Cross Society secured a lease to establish the Canadian Red Cross Convalescent Hospital, No 2, Buxton.”

The hospital opened in May 1916, under the command of Lt. Col. H.D. Johnson C.A.M.C.

There were 11 officers on the staff, 35 nursing sisters and 101 other ranks. The nursing sisters had accommodation at Northwood, now part of the University of Derby campus, which became an annexe hospital in October 1917.

Leslie said: “One of the most famous patients who was treated for his wounds there was Frederick Banting who went on to discover insulin and save the lives of millions of people suffering from Type 1 diabetes and for this he was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1923 and is still the youngest person to receive the Nobel Prize for medicine.”

Mike Munday, who performed in the Buxton Drama League's production of The Crucible plays a Canadian Captain suffering from shell shock and Jill Scott-Neves plays a Buxton nursing Matron.

The play will be performed at The Pump Room on Saturday July, 14 and Friday July, 19 at 7pm and tickets can be obtained from [email protected].