Mrs NINA BISHOP

First Commandant of the Red Cross Auxiliary Military Hospital
ASHE HALL, ETWALL, DERBYSHIRE
from March 1941 to April 1945.

She died in a car crash on Heage Lane, Etwall, returning home to Bearwardcote Hall from Ashe Hall, where she had been on duty.

The hospital opened in March 1941. More than 7500 patients were treated there, men from the Dominions and most European countries.

       Her grave is in Dalbury Churchyard

              Remembered with honour

Miss Nina Barnett, the grand-daughter of Mrs Nina Bishop, recounted to me the following very moving story.

Her father, Major Jack Barnett, who was Mrs Bishop's son by her first marriage, was a prisoner-of-war in Japanese hands from the fall of Singapore till the end of the war.

Out of communication for five years, he knew nothing of his mother's death until he returned to England. He telephoned home to Etwall, and the telephonist at the Etwall Post Office Exchange, whose job it was to put calls through , recognised his voice.

When he asked to speak to his mother at Bearwardcote House, the telephonist told him, "Oh, Master Jack, your mother has been dead some time, and the family no longer live at Bearwardcote, but are    living at Dalbury Rectory.