ANNOTATED WITH LOCATIONS OF GREAT WAR HOSPITALS BY FLORENCE BELL: Bacon’s Motoring and Cycling Road Map: Middlesborough District

North Yorkshire map annotated during the Great War by Lady Florence Bell, President of the North Riding of Yorkshire Red Cross, to identify military hospitals that she oversaw across north Yorkshire. The map is made up of 40 panels printed on paper, backed onto linen with cloth covered card wraps and Lady Bell’s ownership inscription on the verso of the top right panel: ‘Florence Bell 1915. Rounton Grange Hospital’.

Florence Bell has added to the printed map by inserting a system of symbols (with a key written in the North Sea) that refers to Women’s V.A.D. (Voluntary Aid Detachment) units, Men’s V.A.D. Sections, Rest Stations and Temporary Hospitals. At the centre of this network is Rounton Red Cross Hospital which has a special paper label as the unit that came directly under Lady Bell’s control and where she lived. Overall there are several dozen units spread across the map with notes about distances between the hospitals written in and a two digit numbers written alongside each symbols that probably refers to numbers of patients.

Lady Bell was a playwright and author of children’s stories who recognised the potential of her extraordinary step-daughter, the writer and traveller, Gertrude Bell, securing for her an excellent education. Lady Bell was married to Sir Hugh Bell, Director of the Bell Brothers’ Middlesborough Steel Works whose father built the village of Rounton where her hospital was located. Between 1914 and 1919 Florence Bell’s hospital there cared for 387 patients and she served as an active Red Cross nurse throughout.