Remembering Edward Hain: The St Ives soldier who gave his name to a hospital

Edward Hain photos courtesy of the Hain family

St Ives’ hospital bears his name, and is about to embark upon a new role in community health

When buildings bear the names of their benefactors, they also carry a huge weight of historical and emotional significance in their communities. This is certainly the case for the Edward Hain Memorial Hospital in St Ives. The NHS closed the inbed wards in 2016, deemed the building “surplus to requirement” four years later and announced its sale in December 2021, a century after it was gifted to the townsfolk.

The hospital's League of Friends charity made its boldest decision in its 60-year history: to buy the building and reopen it as the Edward Hain Centre for Health & Wellbeing. The bid was backed by members of the community and Hain descendants, and as myCornwall went to press, contracts were due to be exchanged and a manager appointed.

That the purchase was able to happen at all is thanks to active community fundraising. When it closed, the Friends had a healthy nest-egg of £600,000, accrued over many years of campaigns and bequests, which gave them a solid foundation on which to build a campaign.

When a price of £1,020,000 was announced, the sizeable kitty came into play, along with private donations, a mortgage and further fundraising events: quizzes and luncheons, golf and gigs, fashion shows, a whisky auction and an ongoing GoFundMe campaign with a current target of £25,000.

Lynne Isaacs, secretary of the League of Friends of the Former Edward Hain Memorial Hospital, said: “If we hadn’t been in a position to launch the appeal, I have no doubt the building would have been converted or, worst-case scenario, simply demolished to make way for new holiday or second homes. I think that’s the main reason the town and community are so supportive of the fundraising. “The hospital had a very emotional pull for a lot of people. Everyone has some memory of using it - it was easy to access, helped people’s lives go smoothly and contributed to the wellbeing of the community in general.

“Like most Cornish towns, we have lost all kinds of facilities and people are having to travel more. For hospital treatment, for most people that means Treliske - Penzance has a limited range, Hayle too.”

Who was Edward Hain? The only son of Sir Edward Hain - six-times mayor of St Ives, MP from 1900 to 1906 and generous benefactor of the town - Teddy was a keen sportsman and member of the Oxford University dramatic society before training to take over his father’s business, the Edward Hain Steamship Company.

In 1913 he married actress Judith WoganBrown, but their marriage would be shortlived; Teddy joined the Devon Yeomanry as captain when war broke out, and was killed by shellfire on November 11, 1915, when handing over command of his unit within hours of shipping home from Gallipoli.

To create a meaningful memorial to their only son which would also benefit the town, Teddy’s parents founded a hospital converting Albany House and putting it in trust for the people of St Ives. It opened in April 1920, shortly after the death of Teddy’s father (with no male heir, the Hain Steamship company was sold). Capable of taking 12 to 16 patients and geared towards seamen and soldiers, the hospital was initially managed by a trust including Teddy’s sister, Kate, until 1948 when it was taken over by the newly-formed National Health Service.

Kate’s granddaughter, Kit Hain Grindstaff (once half of the Marshall Hain duo, whose 1978 song Dancing in the City was an international hit), is now based in the USA but visits regularly and takes an active role in the campaign. In 2017, she and her brother Tim wrote a song, Hands Across the Harbour, to promote an event which saw 600 people gather in their dressing gowns, representing patients who had been denied care since the hospital closure.

A year later, on November 11, 2018 – the centenary of the end of the First World War – they were present to see Captain Hain’s portrait drawn in the sand on Porthmeor Beach as part of Pages of the Sea, an event conceived by film director Danny Boyle to commemorate the Great War heroes.

“Captain Edward Hain would have been my great-uncle,” says Kit. “My grandmother adored him, and he was a mythical figure in our family. When the hospital was closed, Having learned of the loyalty of the people of St Ives to the Hain name, how could I not respond? The hospital was part of the town’s lifeblood.”

The idea of the hospital being disposed of by the NHS was so inconceivable that a clause was never added to ensure it should come back to the town in such circumstances. “The deeds were handed over, and what happened is entirely legal, if not as moral as we would like,” says Kit. “However, when buildings like this are given up, they have to be offered first to a local government body, and St Ives Town Council stepped in on our behalf to mediate.”

For the business side of things, the Friends turned to Simon Ryan, whose specialist field - creating community organisations and raising funding to buy obsolete buildings for repurposing as community facilities – mostly deals with housing, but fitted the Edward Hain to a tee.

Simon helped with “the dull but vital stuff”: the legal registration of the new charity; communications and negotiations between the Town Council, NHS Property Services and the Friends; setting up the detail of the contracts, including loan finance and staffing structure; and talking to funders, planners, lawyers and accountants “who each speak their own specific language”.

One area that posed no problem was raising community funding to match grants and loans. “I've been in this line of work for many years, and I've never, ever seen this level of community support - it's jawdroppingly amazing,” says Simon. not cost-effective to run as a hospital today,” says Lynne, adding that any nursing care would need to be under the auspices of the NHS. “We have to be realistic - medicine has changed enormously, and there are things you can be treated for now that you couldn’t before.”

So Edward Hain will be a health and wellbeing hub, home to organisations like Age Concern. “There’s a huge need for services that support people who live here permanently, exacerbated by Covid and now the cost-of-living crisis, but there is more to medicine and good health than simply having an operation or taking tablets,” Lynne continues. “For example, there has been an increase in mental health issues, and anything that helps to alleviate that – including preventative medicine and social prescribing - is really valuable.”

Kit Hain is understandably thrilled to be close to completion of purchase, and grateful to everyone who worked and donated to make this happen. “I imagine that my great-grandparents would have something to say about us having had to buy back the hospital they provided for the benefit of the town they loved,” she says. “But I also imagine that they would be blown away by the community’s dedication to the facility, and amazed that Teddy’s story is remembered with such love and respect over 100 years later.” l To make a contribution to the campaign, visit www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-buyback-our-hospital-building

For details of how to send cheques or wire transfers, please contact edwardhaincentre@gmail.com