Monday Mural: propaganda and casualties of World War I at Dunham...

Dunham Massey House was turned into Stamford Military Hospital in World War I. 
Taking part in Monday Mural.

Astonishingly in 1914 house co-owner Lady Stamford only wanted the hospital to be used for wounded officers, rather than the common “Tommy”. The reality of war casualties meant that she didn’t have her snobbish wish granted. 

So it came to pass that hundreds of soldiers from the back streets of industrial cities like Glasgow, Birmingham and nearby Salford (a few miles away as the crow flies but a world apart when it came to income, living conditions and housing stock) were treated here. 

As well using the medical wards, the men who survived had access to the huge estate; the Great Hall was turned into a recreation room with gramophone player, piano, books to read and space to write letters. Or to just sit and contemplate the madness that World War I had brought about.

The patients played chess in the drawing room, croquet on the lawn and punted on the boating lake. It was a long way from the horrors of war and the inequalities and squalor of many of their pre-war lives.

Below are three of the World War I propaganda posters that cost many a man his life...