Communion set

A silver communion set once used at the old Bourne Hospital in South Road which was salvaged from a rubbish skip has joined the museum display of historic artefacts at the Heritage Centre in South Street.

It was presented to the hospital soon after it opened in 1915 for use by visiting priests to give communion to sick and dying patients and was used regularly in the wards for the next eighty years.

The travelling communion set is contained in a fitted leather case and consists of two silver-mounted decanters for wine and water, a silver chalice and paten for the wafers, two brass candlesticks and a cross, and made by Watt and Co of London and bearing the hallmark for 1898.

The hospital closed in September 1998 despite a vigorous public campaign to keep it open and the manager appointed to oversee the closure was Mrs Patricia Friend who worked from Stamford Hospital where she had begun her nursing career as a cadet in 1954, subsequently qualifying as a State Registered Nurse and then becoming senior nursing officer. Although a great deal of furniture and equipment was salvaged for use in other hospital units elsewhere, most was thrown away including the leather-cased communion set which she recognised for its historic value and took it home for safe-keeping.

The hospital buildings were left standing empty for the next five years until early in 2003 when the four-acre site was sold for residential development and bulldozers moved in to demolish the complex which disappeared within a few weeks and has now been replaced by new houses.

Mrs Friend died on October 2013, aged 73, after a nursing career spanning 55 years which she spent at the Stamford Hospital. Her husband, Charles, a retired charity executive, aged 77, and now living at Morton, near Bourne, decided that the communion set should be preserved and passed it on to the Rev David Creasey, associate priest at Morton, and he in turn handed it over to Father Christopher Atkinson, Vicar of Bourne, who carried out some research into its provenance.

“It would have been known as a sick communion set to enable the clergy take holy communion to those who are housebound or in hospital”, he said. “I suspect that it may have been given to the hospital by a retiring priest in order that his successor could carry on the work, perhaps the Vicar of Bourne at that time or even one of his curates but one thing is certain. It has certainly seen a lot of use over the years.”

Father Chris has now handed over the communion set to the Civic Society where it has been put on display at the Heritage Centre. “The whole set and leather case have cleaned up remarkably well”, said society committee member Jim Jones who organises the various collections. “Not only is it an unusual and attractive item from our history but one that is already becoming a talking point among visitors.”

WRITTEN JANUARY 2015