RE your recent picture of Queen Mary at The Dilke: your reader is correct in identifying Dr Harold Sumption standing on the right. Sitting second from the right is Dr David Rocyn-Jones from Ruardean, and next to him is the Matron, Miss McDonnell. Sitting on the far left is Dr R McMinn from Lydbrook and next to him is Mr Bill Tandy, the surgeon at The Dilke.
I came to the Forest in early 1958 as junior partner to Dr Sumption and Dr Anne Rodger. Dr Sumption retired in late 1959 and then opened a pharmacy in Drybrook with his wife as the pharmacist. In late 1958 I became the anaesthetist at the Dilke (in addition to my GP practice), a job which I did until 1990. Mr Tandy, I believe, retired as the surgeon in the early 1970s.
The house in which I live, Quabbs House, was built the Brain family who owned Trafalgar Colliery in the 1840s. In the 1920s-early 30s it was occupied by the Drybrook School headmaster; and Dr Sumption lived at the schoolhouse, running his practice from a shack nearby. They then swopped houses and the practice in Drybrook was run from Quabbs House for the next 56 years. It's difficult to believe that in that space of time the practice premises developed from a shack to a modern health centre.
During the Second World War, incidentally, Dr Sumption was virtuallay the only GP looking after most of the patients in Drybrook, Ruardean, Mitcheldean and Cinderford. – Arthur Hooper, Drybrook.