Cleeve Hill Hospital, Downend, Bristol...

An Autograph Book kept by Amy Hill of Downend

Winterbourne Family History Online...

Email received in April 2014 from Pam Conder, now living in Australia...

Some time ago I looked up Cleve Hill Hospital on the InterNet and it lead me to your site.

I have my mother's autograph book from World War 1. She was then Amy Hill, and lived in Downend, Bristol. She appears to have been a volunteer nurse/visitor during the time wounded soldiers were sent there during the war. Many of the autograph are sketches done by patients at the hospital and signed with their name and battalion and where wounded etc. As I am now getting on and don't want the book to be lost I thought it would be great to have it in the Cleve Hill Hospital section of the museum. It is currently in need of repair as it lived through a house fire I had in 1983. I am about to get it repaired and have scanned all the pages so family members can still have a copy.

Amy eventually married Arthur John (Jock) Cummings an Australian soldier (not sure how they met - maybe he was a patient or visiting someone at the hospital). They had 2 children while still in England (Harold Arthur John - killed in WW2 while flying for the RAF 150 bomber squadron and Constance Jean). They eventually came out to Australia as Jock found it difficult to get work over there after the war. They later had 2 more daughters Carol and myself Pam. I am the last one alive apart from a daughter of Harold who was born after he went missing in action. (Elizabeth Rowe currently of Southampton - whom we only found in recent years). I have given her Harold (Hal's) war flight record and a few other items and hope she gets them to some military museum in the future.