| Administrative History | As early as 1880 there was talk of building a cottage hospital in Forres, Moray but it was not until 1888 when "a friend of Forres" offered £5000 for building and endowing such a hospital that the scheme made any progress. The friend was in due course revealed as Sir Donald Smith (1820-1914), later Lord Strathcona, a native of Forres.
The conditions attached to his offer - that a suitable site be provided for the hospital and the community raise an additional £2000 - were soon fulfilled and the Leanchoil Hospital admitted its first patient on 24 April 1892. The name Leanchoil was a special request by Lord Strathcona and came from his mother's birthplace Leth na Kyle near Abernethy.
The hospital treated both medical and surgical patients and in 1905 it was agreed that maternity cases could also be admitted. Following an agreement with Forres Town Council (who had a statutory duty to prevent and control the spread of infectious diseases) the hospital managers built a wood and iron fever hospital to the rear of the main building. This was run quite separately from the main block and admitted cases of infectious disease from the Burgh of Forres right up until the 1930s when the new Joint County Hospital was built outside Elgin.
Patient numbers in the Leanchoil Hospital rose in the 1920s and '30s and there was soon talk of extending the hospital. Generous donors quickly came forward to defray the costs of these. William Fraser of Knockomie paid for the nurses' home (built on the site of the old fever wards), opened in 1938, and Lady Grant of Logie donated the maternity wing which was completed in 1940.
Under the terms of the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1947 (10 & 11 Geo. VI, c.27), the hospital passed to the National Health Service in 1948. No further major additions or changes were carried out until the early 1960s when a modern operating theatre, an x-ray department, and casualty out-patient and physiotherapy accommodation were built, funded from money left to the hospital by Mr Edwards of Sanquhar, Forres.
By the early 1970s the hospital had a bed complement of 50 - 38 GP beds and 12 GP obstetric beds. During the 1980s the continued existence of the maternity unit came into question as maternity services in Grampian were re-organised. However, it was not 1996 that the maternity unit at Leanchoil Hospital was finally closed, following the completion of the new maternity unit at Dr Gray's Hospital in Elgin. |
| Description | Annual reports, regulations, legal papers, etc., 1888 - 1948; admissions and maternity registers, 1908 - 1976; visitors book and news cuttings, 1888 - 1964; minutes, 1888 - 1948 (indexed); photographs of buildings and staff, 1889 - 1930. |