My grandparents moved out to Rothbury when grandfather retired in 1923 and lived in the house just to the west of the Turks Head. My father qualified in 1924 and came to Rothbury in 1925 and went into partnership with Dr Hedley. At that time there were three single-handed doctors working here. Dr Smail lived at Stewart House, Dr Barrow was at Ogle House and Dr Hedley lived in Walby Hill (where the Forestry Commission have their office). It was a new procedure to work in a partnership and my father saw his own patients at the house in the High Street.
They dispensed their own medicines and they had about 2000 patients between them. The practice flourished even though Dr Hedley’s annual telephone bill only amounted to L6.14s.4d in 1936. During the war my father served in the Eighth Army, commanding a field Ambulance in the North African desert and then a casualty Clearing Station in the South of Italy. Whilst he was away in the war the practice was run by Dr Sal Pelly, who lived in Thropton, and whose son Hugh came to the practice in 1976.
Dr Hedley had retired by the end of the war and Dr Tony Bell who had been a naval m.o. joined the practice. At that time the practice team consisted of two doctors, one receptionist/secretary/dispenser and two doctors wives. They shared the out of hours cover and had half a day off each week - alternating on Fridays and Sundays when there were no surgeries. Dr Bell did a Saturday evening surgery every week for 21 years.
A maternity unit was built at the Cottage Hospital and was extremely popular. By the mid 1960s 350 babies were born each year, the job being shared between Dr Smail, son of previous one, Dr Richardson at Harbottle and Drs Armstrong and Bell at Rothbury. In 1964 my father diagnosed the first and only case - so far - of human foot and mouth disease and he retired in 1968 at the age of 70, a year after I had joined the practice. He died soon after. Practice numbers continued to rise and home visiting was still over 80% of our patient contacts at that time. Tony Bell retired in 1976 and Hugh Pelly joined me. In 1980 I went off to Pakistan to spend a sabbatical break looking after Afghan refugees near Peshawar and on my return we took on Frances Dower and I became a trainer with Gordon Cameron as my first trainee and Elizabeth Walsh as my third one. By now the maternity unit had closed but we were still covering about 600 square miles of Northumberland. We opened a branch surgery in Longframlington and moved into purpose built premises in the centre of the village in Market Place. Hugh Pelly went to work outside Salisbury in 1985 and Gordon Cameron joined us. The practice had grown to nearly 5000 patients who were now being seen in the new premises and home visiting was greatly reduced. The workload continued to increase and we employed a practice manager. In 1995 I went part-time and Billy Hunt joined the team. By now the team consisted of five doctors, two practice nurses, practice manager, secretary, and six receptionists. Within the next two years both Frances and I will have retired so that the practice will be gaining new input as it gets going in the 21st century.
Angus