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Remembered Today:

Horse isolation hospital, Fargo, Salisbury Plain


Richard Osgood

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Dear all,

I would dearly love to pick your brains RE the 1914 horse isolation hospital at Fargo, just south of the Packway near Larkhill on Salisbury Plain. If anyone has any information at all about this - I'd love to hear from you! much appreciation in advance, Richard

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Hi Richard,

Can't help directly, but here is the Army Medical Services Museum's history of the Corps: http://www.ams-museum.org.uk/museum/ravc-history/

Maybe their research service can find you something on Fargo.

Best wishes,

seaJane

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Thanks for the suggestion SeaJane. Sadly no luck there - still I guess this means that any information we uncover will add hugely! will keep forum posted, Best R

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Ah right.

I wondered if you had found the brief mention down the page here: http://history.wiltshire.gov.uk/community/getcom.php?id=84

I notice that Wiltshire's local studies e-mail address (localstudies @wiltshire.gov.uk) is in the left-hand column of that page - although you've probably tried them, along with archives@ [etc] which contacts the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre (http://www.wshc.eu/- closed all this week 9-14 Dec, though).

sJ

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The first link in seaJane's post above leads to a reference to the soldiers' hospital at Fargo, which Richard asked me about last year - he also contacted me about the horse isolation hospital, but in both cases I was unable to help, save to give him these details which he already knew:

The Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England) publication, Stonehenge and its Environs (Edinburgh University Press 1979). gives a precise grid references for the horse isolation hospital (110438) and Trevor Rowley, in The English Landscape in the Twentieth Century, notes it was "at Fargo Farm". My 2-inch 1906 map of the locality marks "Fargo Down Barn", midway between Fargo Down and Lark Hill camping-sites.

I suggested to Richard that the site was chosen because units that depended on horses camped in the locality before the war. I have several postcards of the 1st South Midland Royal Field Artillery at Fargo in 1910, including one of its horse-lines and another of horse troughs. Units that camped prewar at Lark Hill (very close by) were mostly infantry.

Now the thought occurs that the buildings at Fargo Farm/Down Barn would have lent themselves easily to accommodating horses; there were none at Lark Hill itself until the very large hutments were built there in late 1914.

Certainly none of this is going to help Richard, but it does give me a chance to repeat a plaint that I voiced some years ago that I've never seen a photograph of the soldiers' hospital at Fargo (which was very large, with 1,200 beds), whereas there are dozens of postcard photographs featuring the hutted camps at Lark Hill during the war.

Moonraker

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Thanks Terry - I may well be getting in touch with you RE this in the near future if ok? Best R

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  • 3 weeks later...

I think this Fuller photo shows Fargo. It's plate #52 in "Plain Soldiering"

Camera is on E edge of Fargo Plantation, looking NE. I'd put camera at 111435 (+/-). Not a million miles from that GR given in post #5.

Railway has turned NE/SW to pass through plantation, and is curving left in photo to run N, and cross Packway at right angles.

Track is embanked over the low ground which eventually leads down to Stonehenge Bottom.

Copse on left still there. Track on left running past far side of copse is the one that leads up to Packway; still there, joining P/W about 150 yards E of E fence of present day Ammunition Compound. (It has a barred metal gate and "No Entry" sign now).

post-86463-0-66565300-1388683348_thumb.j

Plain Soldiering caption suggests these huts are being built in 1915.

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That's a fine piece of detective work, Mr Drill, and very convincing. That's one part of the modern Lark Hill complex I haven't checked out - I must do so this coming summer.

It's also a very fine photograph which I assume was published as a postcard - not that I've ever seen one.

I've long assumed that the circular pile in the foreground comprises tent floor boards.

Moonraker

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Great photo from a great book.

Stoppage, are you local to the photo?

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I reckon he is, but Mr Drill protects his anonymity. A veritable Caped Crusader.

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One can still see traces of the Lark Hill Military Railway to the SE of the main camp, but are there any of the embankment to the rear of the huts in the photo?

Moonraker

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The Joker, rather.

A few miles away, up the Avon valley.

I hope it's not too wet up there? We have missed the worst of it here on the edge of the western Plain.

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One can still see traces of the Lark Hill Military Railway to the SE of the main camp, but are there any of the embankment to the rear of the huts in the photo?

Moonraker

The "track of old railway" is shown on the current OS map in the area you mention, and (I believe) the senior officers married quarter patch known as Strangways is arranged around an old railway turning circle.

There is no similar marking of the old track in the Fargo area, though if you look at GR113 446 there is a symbol for a curved embankment immediately north of the Packway. This may be a vestige of where the line turned to run parallel with the Packway.

Fargo army real estate is, I think, owned by Larkhill Garrison rather than Army Training Estate. I take the "No Entry" sign to mean what it says, and there is an MoD Police Station just up the road ! A couple of years ago I got down to Durrington Down Farm (between Fargo Road and The Cursus) grid square 1243, but that was in connection with a shoot, and I wasn't looking westwards !

Incidentally, do you know the present Tom Fuller ?

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I hope it's not too wet up there? We have missed the worst of it here on the edge of the western Plain.

The river is carrying the water away well enough, but it's as high as I've seen it. Thanks to Army ownership of the land there has been no building development on the flood plain, so we can rely on nature (modified by mediaeval hydraulic engineering!) Lots of springs starting to flow. One interesting thing to watch out for is the Nine Mile River starting to flow above ground across the Netheravon to Everleigh road near Beaches Barn, and then on down towards Bulford. I've only seen that once in my life.

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Does that make it a 10 mile river?

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I thought Wiltshire had gone metric.

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Incidentally, do you know the present Tom Fuller ?

It's Jim Fuller, grandson of T L (known as John) Fuller - unless there's a Tom alive that I don't know of. He was very co-operative about illustrations for my two books, even printing from the original slides.

The river is carrying the water away well enough, but it's as high as I've seen it. Thanks to Army ownership of the land there has been no building development on the flood plain, so we can rely on nature (modified by mediaeval hydraulic engineering!) Lots of springs starting to flow. One interesting thing to watch out for is the Nine Mile River starting to flow above ground across the Netheravon to Everleigh road near Beaches Barn, and then on down towards Bulford. I've only seen that once in my life.

There was a lot of flooding in January 1915, with the Till breaking its banks at Elston, four miles west of Lark Hill. There are lots of Fuller postcards showing Canadian transport splashing through floor water where the Amesbury by-pass now runs, and rather fewer published by Arthur Marett of the floods in his locality; one shows a Canadian soldier diving into the water in his underwear - in January!

Moonraker

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Here are the two pics of the January 1915 floods near Lark Hill.

Elston:

post-6017-0-93250500-1388770905_thumb.jp

north of Amesbury:

post-6017-0-63785400-1388770924_thumb.jp

Moonraker

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It's Jim Fuller, grandson of T L (known as John) Fuller - unless there's a Tom alive that I don't know of. He was very co-operative about illustrations for my two books, even printing from the original slides.

His name is James Thomas - his late father (TL's son) was Jim - and if memory serves me aright (and that's asking a lot, I admit) I knew his grandson as Tom to avoid confusion.

Jim - the son, God rest his soul - kept up the business, and was a commonly encountered face in the camps and barracks up to the late 1980s, taking course/mess/team photographs usually. I put work his way on many occasions, and we got on well. He was a real professional, and enjoyed the odd G&T !

Happy Days.

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I've never actually met him, but in our exchange of letters and emails - the most recent being last year - he's been Jim!

Moonraker

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Dear all, many thanks for the continued (very interesting) debate. I wonder if James Thomas Fuller thus has any pics of Fargo as per the image in Plain Soldiering #51 which has a rather splendid ASC horse? Hoping to find out more, and to visit Salisbury Museum which has an archive box of finds from this area following field-walking by Julian Richards as part of his Stonehnge Environs Survey. Best R. PS All that land is now owned by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation

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Hi Richard

A few years ago Jim sent me a photo that he thought might be of Fargo Hospital (for soldiers, not horses) showing nurses and patients outside what looks like a connecting corridor between buildings, with trees in the background (but not as dense as those of the Plantation). It seems likely that it is Fargo, as it's close to Amesbury, where John Fuller lived, and he concentrated on the Lark Hill complex, mainly - but not entirely - leaving Bulford and Sling to Marcus Bennett.

I don't suppose that a horse isolation hospital was a top priority to photograph - it's not as if the patients could send postcards home to their families!

I think that John was called up to the RFC in 1917, but he seems to have stopped publishing postcards of local army camps in 1915. This may have been because of the censorship regulations that were introduced early that year, though there are many postcards of Lark Hill later in the war published under the Kingsway, Sepiatone and YMCA brands.

I suppose I have to be a little coy about giving Jim's contact details in a public forum, though his photographic business is listed on-line and you'll see that he lives in an appropriately-named road! Any problems, do PM me.

Moonraker

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I agree it's a bit off to discuss the address here, and I'm happy to concede on the name - it's about 15 years since I had any direct contact, though I have visited that residence on the appropriately named thoroughfare on a couple of occasions.

I think one of JL's premises still exists, a corrugated shed on Flower Lane (turn in past Amesbury Pet Shop).

I was having a look at a photo/map display in Amesbury Tesco today - it's a permanent exhibition and it centres on the Larkhill Military Railway. Have you seen it ? (In the covered entrance area ). I don't know the date of the map, though it shows a small embankment at the point I have suggested in my post #7. It also shows an extensive hutted camp/(hospital ?) to the immediate north of the plantation.

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