WELL hello! Who have we got hanging around near Bailey Park this week?

Why it’s none other than the man who would be King and the lady who history would remember as the Queen’s mother.

Only neither of them knew it then!

The year is 1932, and the venue is Abergavenny’s Cottage Hospital, where the Duke and Duchess of York were opening the new maternity wing.

In 1932, King George V was still on the throne, and Edward, Prince of Wales, was the heir apparent.

The Yorks were destined to play a supporting role in the monarchy, but that all changed four years later with the death of King George V and the abdication of Edward VIII, who fell in love with an American.

Yet all that’s by and by!

The real meat on this particular bone is the Cottage Hospital.

Long before Nevill Hall was a thing to moan about and hang around in, there was the Victoria Cottage Hospital.

The Joint Counties Lunatic Asylum, or Pen-y-Fal, came first in 1851, because locking up troublesome women and misfits took priority over people’s general health, but in 1890, the town was given a Cottage Hospital and Dispensary to call its own.

Although a handy place for the sick and needy folk of Abergavenny to swing by, have a cuppa and hurl abuse at the nursing staff, its premises were little more than a terraced house at 56 Castle Street.

The need soon outstripped the facility, and so funds were raised, a plot of land was sought, and a brand new purpose-built building was erected.

The site was a little patch of land beside the Hereford Road. It was named Victoria after the old Queen who celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

On Friday, June 28, 1901, a foundation stone was laid by the Marquess of Abergavenny and company, who had just enjoyed a rather splendid lunch.

Beneath the stone was placed a copy of The Abergavenny Chronicle and some now forgotten newspapers called The Times, The Daily Telegraph and the Western Mail.

After hammering the stone with a mallet, the Marquess quipped, “I declare this stone to be well and truly laid.”

And as it was written, so it was done!

Or at least the ceremonial bit was.

The men who had to actually build the bloody thing didn’t get a mention, but the architect did. His name was E.A. Johnson, the guy who designed most of modern Abergavenny.

The Victoria Cottage Hospital & Dispensary was intended “for the reception of non-infectious diseases, of curable diseases and accidents, which could not be efficiently treated at the homes of the poor residing in the town and neighbourhood of Abergavenny.”

Originally housing nine beds, it extended over the years to become a 37 bed hospital. Yet much like The Grange had a detrimental effect on Nevill Hall, the Victoria fell foul of the opening of Nevill Hall.

In 1973, a petition was launched to stop its closure, but the Welsh Hospital Board said they no longer had a “use for it.”

In 1982, it became Victoria Court and a home for elderly people.