A NEW wartime exhibition has opened at Faringdon’s Pump House.

The southern Oxfordshire community centre is playing host to ‘Hospital: Faringdon’s Pump House in WWI’, for six months.

The exhibition features previously unseen items from Lord Faringdon’s personal collection which have been in storage at Buscot Park.

Other items, from the Red Cross and on loan from the Oxfordshire Museums Service, are also included.

The exhibition’s curator, volunteer Faith Carpenter from The Company Curator, said: “It’s a small exhibition but it is a very interesting little snapshot of life in Faringdon during the First World War.

The Faringdon local continued: “The most interesting artefact in the exhibition is the hospital admissions and discharge book, which lists all of the particulars of the 242 men who stayed in the hospital, all of their injuries, their names and their ranks.

“We have transcribed that for visitors to look at.”

Lord Faringdon’s grandmother, Lady Violet Henderson – a registered nurse caring for her husband, brother, father and uncle, who had been wounded in the Boer War (1899-1902) – set up the original hospital nearby.

With the onset of war, she took the decision to set up an Auxiliary Red Cross Hospital at her home, Kitemore House, in Shellingford, where she and four nurses cared for wounded ‘inmates’.

The hospital was then transferred to The Pump House building during the First World War – which is the subject of the exhibition and its displays.

Most of the British public expected the war to be finished by Christmas, meaning supplies and staff at the hospital were initially quite limited, before the full scale of the conflict became clear.

However with the German army not being the ‘pushover’ British propaganda had forecast and many expected, the hospital soon added more provisions to treat soldiers that came home.

The admission and discharge book reveals that some were even treated for malaria on returning from the front.

Other displays show the availability of cocaine over the counter, while a picture of Lady Violet, painted by John William Waterhouse is also on display courtesy of the Buscot Park Estate.

Other exhibits show the worries about trenchfoot during the war and an early ‘wheelchair’, sat in by a Mr Alder in Kitemoor, after fundraising by a Mr Beszant.

The self-funding Pump House Project was established in the town centre in 2013 and aims to ‘continuously create a versatile and vibrant, multi-purpose activity centre for the town and its surrounding areas.’

Sally Thurston, clerk to Faringdon Town Council, said: “Our residents have long wanted to see a dedicated museum, that celebrates Faringdon’s rich and diverse history.

"This will be the first step in realising that ambition.”

For more information, visit thepumphouseproject.co.uk/home