Huthwaite History

Historic Health Care

Ambulance Services

First local public emergency ambulance is found introduced at Sutton-in-Ashfield. September 1933 dates when Sutton Urban Councillors were sanctioned by the Ministry of Transport to borrow £730 for the purchase of their new motor ambulance.

Amazingly, Chris Kidger can present that exact vehicle accompanied with some names recognising:- Dr Donald Oscroft, F Hollingworth, H Bacon, E Ringrose, F Fowkes and E Wilson among this proud grouping.

Nearest hospital catering for patients at that time was the Mansfield General. Judging simply from the regularity of reported road accidents that involve bicycles and all types of motorised vehicles, transportation may have even become biggest cause for seriously injuring people.

999 Emergency Ambulance

Delayed contact through switchboard operators and confusion finding individual emergency numbers was a problem rectified by the General Post Office telecommunications system. A carefully chosen number 999 could automatically trigger a priority alarm, and has been nationally recognised since 1937 introduction that June.

The modernised Sutton Ambulance Service became stationed upon Brook Street junction facing Spring Road, shown in 1976. This station had also combined a Sutton Fire Brigade, until both those East Midland Services were separately relocated, leaving this c1990 vacated site for demolition.   In my casual observance it appears the smaller Sutton force thereafter merged with a Mansfield Ambulance forming next current service.

East Midlands Ambulance Service

Becoming an integral part of the East Midlands Ambulance Service it has since been incorporated among a central station located adjacent the recently rebuilt Sutton Kings Mill Hospital bordering upon and addressing Mansfield Road.

That Sutton Hospital emerged after WWII, later adding what may initially have been classed a neighbouring Mansfield Ambulance Service.

Those station members were featured in 1992, here shown showing off their restored examples of past Daimler and Austin vehicles that dated back from 1950s services.