Exciting discovery from an East Sussex Reclamation Yard

An eagle-eyed past member of staff from The Middlesex was looking around a reclamation yard in East Sussex and to her delight saw a foundation stone to the Bland Sutton Institute for sale. The site manager informed her that It was part of a few items from The Middlesex that came to them from another yard, which was going out of business, quite a while ago. The manager informed us that there was one other item left from the hospital and this was a stone arch, although we do not know where this was located. We decided to purchase both stones and have them professionally cleaned. We are delighted that The Fitzrovia Chapel has agreed to store these two stones in their basement until we know where they can be displayed.

Sir John Bland Sutton was a key player in the Fitzrovia Chapel’s development and is well commemorated in the Chapel in stained glass, a plaque in the Chapel itself and one in the Antechapel.

Fundraising for the two Stones

We need to raise money for these stones and there will be no specific amount suggested and it will be entirely at your own discretion.

The amount needed will include the following: Cost of the two stones, collection from the reclamation yard, professional cleaning, and transporting to the Fitzrovia Chapel.

We are hoping to display the stone(s) near the chapel provided we can get permission from the landowners. Any surplus funds will be divided between the Fitzrovia Chapel and The Middlesex Hospital Nurses Benevolent Fund.

If you wish to make a donation, please fill in the form at the bottom of the page. Once you submit the form you will be taken to our Paypal account to complete the payment with either a debit/credit card or via your own Paypal account.

Thank you

We are very grateful to Lee Keelan, Senior Contracts Manager, from Rosewood Ltd for all their help with this project and to his six burly men who had to manoeuvre the 250 kg foundation stone and arch stone into the basement.

Sir John Bland-Sutton and Rudyard Kipling on their way to the Middlesex Hospital medical student prize-giving in 1908.

Sir John Bland-Sutton (1855-1936)

Sir John Bland-Sutton was a consulting surgeon to The Middlesex Hospital and became President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England from 1923-25. At the time of his death, it was said that since John Hunter, no pathologist-surgeon of equal eminence has arisen in Great Britain, and like his prototype, he approached surgery through the study of anatomy and comparative anatomy. Like Hunter, too, he was brought up in the country, and school played a less prominent part in his education than his own sharp eyes and sceptical curiosity. Unlike Hunter, he was not an experimentalist. He was more preoccupied with naked-eye form than with histology or physiology, though he always studied morphology in relation to function and to the evolutionary process.