MORFORWYN Jones of Drybrook, took a trip down Memory Lane at the Wilderness Centre’s recent open day.

Her parents met there in 1932, when the site was an isolation hospital for children suffering from diphtheria and scarlet fever. Morforwyn’s mother, Morfa Lewis, was a nurse and then matron at the hospital and her father, Charles Reed, was a gardener and ambulance driver.

Morforwyn says: “Mum was working her way back home to Wales from her training in Birmingham and applied to work at Wilderness Hospital on the way. She travelled to her interview by train, arriving at Mitcheldean Road Station, but when she arrived for the job by bus, she was dropped off at the end of the long drive surrounded by trees. She told me she wondered what on earth she had done, but then my father came and met her. He was a gardener by profession and also drove the ambulance for the hospital.”

Wilderness Centre manager Deborah Blackmore says: “The Wilderness was built as a private residence and then was run as a sanatorium. When that closed in 1919 the East Dean and District Joint Hospital Board purchased the house for use as an isolation hospital. It was then a geriatric hospital until 1965 before it became a field studies centre.”

Morforwyn’s parents married in 1935 and moved to Drybrook where she was born in 1937 and where she grew up. She says: “I never went up to the hospital because it wasn’t safe, so it was fascinating to see where they worked and to find the doorway where my mother had posed for a photo all those years ago. My daughter is a teacher and she was interested in finding out more about what the Wilderness Centre does for schools today, so it gave me the perfect excuse to go back!”

•See this week’s Review for more photographs.