HEADINGTON Hill Hall played an important role in helping wounded troops during the Second World War.

St Hugh’s College became a military hospital specialising in head injuries, and the hall was one of the places where the injured were taken to recuperate.

The rehabilitation they received from medical staff there meant that many were able to return to lead normal lives.

The story of the role the hall played during and after the war is told a new book, written by Dawn Griffis, who lived with her family on the site at Lower Lodge.

St Hugh’s was chosen as a military hospital as, unlike other Oxford colleges, it was relatively new and could be adapted more easily.

During the First World War, there was no specialist treatment and between 40 and 50 per cent of casualties suffering penetrating wounds to the head died, mainly through infection.

Sir Hugh Cairns assembled a team of experts to open the Combined Services Hospital for Head Injuries at St Hugh’s in 1940. With students moved elsewhere, the team set up wards and operating theatres in the college’s main building and concrete huts erected in the grounds.

They treated about 13,000 casualties from all three services and provided an invaluable training ground for neurologists and nursing staff.

After treatment, many patients were moved three miles to Headington Hill Hall, at the top of Headington Hill, where detailed records were kept of their progress.

These records were later used in research by Professor William Ritchie Russell and others to improve knowledge of the brain and treatment of head injuries. Headington Hill Hall was built in 1824 for the Morrell brewery family and was occupied by them for 114 years.

It continued as a rehabilitation centre, run by the Red Cross and the Order of St John, until 1958 when the new owners, Oxford City Council, decided to lease the building.

Robert Maxwell lived there, describing it as “the best council house in the country”, and set up his Pergamon Press headquarters on the site. It is now part of Oxford Brookes University.

  • Headington Hill Hall: The Forgotten Years, 1939–1958 is published by Lulu and available at Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford l Next week – Headington Hill Hall’s wartime role.