Musgrave Park Hospital

Story

Musgrave Park Hospital is a regional specialist hospital, managed by Belfast Health and Social Care Trust in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It specialises in orthopaedics, rheumatology, sports medicine and rehabilitation of patients of all ages. These specialties are spread out across a large site in the leafy suburbs of South Belfast. The Hospital is named after the of adjacent municipal parkland known as Musgrave Park, first opened to the public in 1920.HistoryNissen huts were constructed on the site of the current hospital during the Second World War by the American army. They were a temporary base for soldiers preparing to take part in the Normandy Landings. They have housed various hospital departments in their 44-year history and have only recently been demolished to make way for the new Regional Acquired Brain Injury Unit.The hospital has played its part in the history of The Troubles. On Monday 15 December 1980, Sean McKenna, one of the original seven hunger strikers was moved to Musgrave Park Hospital.In November 1991, a bomb planted by the Provisional IRA exploded in the Military Wing at Musgrave Park hospital. Two soldiers were killed (one Royal Army Medical Corps, named Phil Cross, the other Royal Corps of Transport), named Craig Pantry, and 11 other people were injured, among them a five-year-old girl and a baby of four months. The 20lb of Semtex exploded in a service tunnel connecting the Withers block, containing orthopaedic and children's wards and the Military Wing. The dead and injured were watching a rugby match on television in the Military Wing's social club.