The Churchill Hospital in Oxford has been providing excellent treatment for local patients for 75 years.

The hospital off Old Road, Headington, was officially opened by the Duchess of Kent in January 1942. Its initial purpose was to look after wartime air raid casualties.

That proved unnecessary and the buildings were leased to the United States Army. When the Americans moved out after the war, the first local patients moved in, in January 1946.

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Like all Oxford hospitals, the Churchill has had its fair share of fundraisers, supporters and wellwishers over the years, as these pictures illustrate.

Picture 1 shows three lovely ‘women’ and a dog called Jenny, who ran 15 miles from their homes in Buckland, near Faringdon, to the hospital in 1979.

The trio of Florence Nightingales – alias Les Baxter, Melbourne Tomlins and Peter Page – raised £300 towards a kidney machine for the renal unit.

Melbourne said: “We had quite a few wolf whistles and people asking whether we were men or women.”

At least running wasn’t as hard as the back-breaking task in Picture 2 - workers from County Dairies in Langford Lane, Kidlington, pulled the eight-ton cab of an articulated lorry 100 yards.

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2

The muscle men – Herby Hare, Keith Brady, Stephen Bayley, Tony Goodlake and Ian Bayley – raised more than £100 for the geriatric ward in 1986.

Members of the Sickle and Cloak and the Numskulls Motorcycle Club, in Picture 3, organised a rally in 1986 and raised £75 from a raffle to buy two electric fires, a fan heater and toiletries for the long-stay elderly patients’ ward.

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3

Sickle and Cloak secretary Laraine Wall, front, is seen with her grandmother, Theresa Rowland, 96, who was a patient.

Mary Haines, of Denchworth, near Wantage, was a leading fundraiser for the hospital, picking fruit and making and selling jam, organising jumble sales and bazaars and running raffles.

She is seen in Picture 4 with colleagues at the Government Property Services Agency at Milton, near Abingdon, in 1982 handing a cheque for £1,025 to hospital governor John Hunt for the hospital’s minibus fund.

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4

Nine teenagers who starved themselves for 24 hours while locked in the village hall at Stonesfield, near Woodstock, got their just reward – tea, cakes and lemonade served by hospital staff.

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Glen Franklin, in Picture 5, hands a cheque for £250 to Sister G Morgan in 1976 to buy a special bed for the neurology unit.

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5

Three 10-year-old boys from Hill View Primary School, Banbury, collected so much jumble they had to switch their sale from their back garden to the local community centre in 1978.

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6

Richard Coleman, left, and Jonathan Blackwell are seen in Picture 6 handing a cheque for £130 to renal physician Dr Desmond Oliver. The third boy, Richard Paster, was on holiday.