Robin Lamplough takes a closer look at the history of this government hospital.
When the Covid pandemic began in 2021, my wife, Jean, and I were directed to the Hillcrest Government Hospital for our first jabs. There they were quickly and efficiently administered.
But this was by no means our first introduction to the place. Several decades earlier it had been a local repository for educational films, which Jean used in her classroom. Borrowing them involved one trip to collect the material and then another trip to return it. Over the years we also visited several old and infirm friends who were being cared for in the institution.
But the history of this hospital goes far further back than that. Elizabeth Camp’s most instructive collection of material on early Hillcrest, Lest We Forget (1999), reveals that the Natal Provincial Administration built the hospital “for the chronic sick” 93 years ago, in 1929. It was erected on a 34-acre piece of land that was previously owned by R.N. Acutt – a member of the property agent family who from 1895 had promoted the sale of stands on the section of William Gillitt’s land that would become Hillcrest.
On 24 February 1944, an inspection by the Union Health Department reported that the health committee area of Hillcrest had come into effect under Proclamation 21 of 1943. At this time the European population of Hillcrest totalled 585, including 200 staff and patients at the hospital! It was also noted that the nearest general hospital was at Mariannhilll, 10 miles away. The Hillcrest Chronic Sick Hospital served the entire province of Natal.
This report also mentioned two general problems that would have affected the hospital as they did all other residents of the growing village. The first was that there was no public water supply. Many villagers had rainwater tanks beside their houses — boys in their beds at Chard’s School used to hear their teachers tapping the tanks to determine the level of water in them. Other residents went to the railway siding to draw water from the tanks erected to supply the steam engines.
An even more serious problem was that there was no public sewerage system in the village, and each property owner had to provide for his own needs. Some had septic tanks, others had pit privies and yet others had pail closets.
The report noted that the health committee’s most pressing need was a safe and adequate water supply. The original plan was to dam a stream flowing down the Giba Gorge, at St Helier, where one would be built in the next century. The report urged the local health committee to approach the Provincial Administration with a view to meet this need by setting up a regional scheme covering the area from Botha’s Hill to Westville. This did not happen until the building of Midmar Dam in the middle of the 20th century. Before that, the village relied on water from the Nkutu stream. It was on the banks of this stream that the first Voortrekker settler established his farm, which he called Langefontein after the charming waterway.
The Hillcrest Government Hospital is one of the oldest remaining institutions in what is now the Outer West. The Department of Health reports that in 2022, in addition to the 167 beds for chronic or abandoned patients, there are eight in an isolation ward. The aim is to develop the hospital into a full facility for the rehabilitation of as many patients as possible.
Isn’t it wonderful that a building closing in on its centenary is still adding such value to our community.