Here is Fay our costumed tour guide at the University of Derby Buxton, behind her is a cabinet with a picture of the real Vera.
We are honoured to be able to tell the story of Vera Brittain in the very place she first nursed i.e. the Devonshire Royal hospital in Buxton now the University.
Vera and her family came to live in Buxton in 1904 when she was 11 years old. They lived first at High Leigh on Manchester Road then moved to Melrose on Park Road where a blue plaque marks the place.
Vera’s ambitions however were far greater than those imposed on Edwardian women and she desired to break free of a town she referred to as full of “censorious small-mindedness”.
Just as the First World War was breaking out, she won an Exhibition to Somerville to read English but by the end of her first year she decided it was her duty to leave Oxford and do something for the war effort.
She returned to Buxton during the summer of 1915 to work as a nursing assistant, tending wounded soldiers at the Devonshire Royal Hospital. Altogether as many as 5,400 soldiers were treated here in Buxton.
In the place where Vera Brittain first formed her testament to a lost youth our guide tells her powerful and moving story.
Group bookings only and advanced bookings only on selected Sundays throughout the summer at 2pm. £8 pp
Contact Netta on:
netta@discoverbuxton.co.uk or 01298 79648 to make a booking