Great Ward Poetry is a talk at the Wandsworth Museum by local historian and writer Simon McNeill-Ritchie.

In 1915, the patients and staff were given permission to publish The Gazette, a monthly journal of articles, sketches and poems, to raise funds for the soldiers’ ‘comforts’.  Simon McNeill-Rtchie, a former British diplomat and local resident, has compiled a collection of forty of the poems and added brief notes on the repatriation of the wounded from the Front. He will be donating 50% of the proceeds to SSAFA, the military charity supporting service personnel and their families.

At the outbreak of war in August 1914, the Royal Victoria Patriotic School on Wandsworth Common was commandeered by the Territorial Army and converted into one of the four ‘Great’ war hospitals in London. Over 52,000 men were treated there until it closed in 1919.

It takes place on 16th October 2014 at Wandsworth Museum 38 West Hill Wandsworth SW18 1RX.

Entrance at 7pm for 7.30.  Tickets cost £7.00.