AN ARCHITECT is calling for services to be restored at Wycombe Hospital after unearthing a rare document detailing how the hospital was built by the people of the town for the people of the town.

Tony Mealing, 56, of Totteridge Road, is the owner of High Wycombe & District Hospital, Fancy Fair and Fete a booklet that was made in 1923 in the advent of the building of Wycombe Hospital in Barracks Road.

In it are details of local people who raised money and made donations to make the building of the new hospital possible.

Mr Mealing, whose mother trained as a nurse at the hospital in the 1940s, said: "As far as I know no one else has a copy of this. It tells us how Wycombe Hospital has been provided by the people of Wycombe on land given to the people of Wycombe with the explicit use for this area.

"It clearly tells us that the land is ours. It was given to the people of High Wycombe and has nothing to do with Aylesbury."

The need for a hospital was first recognised after the outbreak of the First World War, when the limited accommodation provided by the existing cottage hospital in Priory Road became insufficient for the town and surrounding districts.

Details in the booklet show that in 1916 a committee decided to proceed with the building of a new hospital as soon as funds and circumstances permitted.

Mr Mealing said: "The land was given to the people by the marquis and marchioness of Lincolnshire and resident Tom Bert and by 1920 some £30,000 had been raised locally by ordinary people in the town."