RUH
The Royal United Hospital (RUH) is Bath's district general hospital, at Combe Park in Weston, about a mile and a half from the city centre. It treats people from Bath, North East Somerset and western Wiltshire, a catchment of around 500,000.
Georgian Bath grew quickly, and medical care for ordinary people didn't keep up. The Mineral Water Hospital opened in 1742, but it was only for visitors, so if you lived in the city and fell ill or were injured there wasn't really anywhere that would take you.
The Bath Pauper Trust was set up in 1747 and grew into the City Infirmary and Dispensary, and a Casualty Hospital opened on Kingsmead Street in 1788 because so many labourers were being badly hurt on the building sites. Those two charities joined in 1826 as the Bath United Hospital, in a building on Beau Street designed by John Pinch. Queen Victoria granted the "Royal" title in 1864, when the Albert Wing opened.
By the 1930s Beau Street was too small, and on 11 December 1932 the hospital moved to Combe Park, onto land that had been used as the Bath War Hospital during the First World War. The NHS took it on in 1948. The Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital moved across in 1959, the Bath Eye Infirmary in 1973, and maternity in 2014. In 2015 the trust took over the Min, and those rheumatology, pain and fatigue services are now at Combe Park as well.
You can read more from the hospital itself on the RUH website.
Bath Sound and the RUH
Bath Sound started in 1964 as Bath Hospital Radio, keeping patients company at the Royal United Hospital and at the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases, known in Bath as the Min. Live programmes started after our tenth anniversary in 1974, and in 1989 we moved into new premises on the Combe Park site of the RUH, where we've been broadcasting from ever since. We began broadcasting 24 hours a day in 2000, and two years later the Hospital Broadcasting Association named us Hospital Radio Station of the Year.
Bath Hospital Radio became Bath Radio, and in 2021 we merged with BA1 Radio to become Bath Sound, but we never stopped broadcasting to the hospital. Volunteers still put out more than 30 hours a week, giving a familar voice to those on the ward, and at 3pm on Sundays we carry Sunday Worship from the RUH chaplaincy team in the Spiritual Care Centre.
If you're in hospital you can listen for free on Channel 1 of the bedside set, whilst those at home or on the go can listen at bathsound.radio, on TuneIn, or by asking a smart speaker to "play Bath Sound radio". Song requests and messages for people on the wards can be sent to [email protected] or sending us a WhatsApp on +44 7354 804 840.