Edwyn Ralph

VILLAGE HALL -- When an article appeared in The Hereford Times in May about an American wartime hospital at Foxley, near Mansell Lacy, a Birmingham couple Fran and Martin Collins asked for information about it. Thelma Beresford from the Crest wrote to them to tell them that the Edwyn Ralph village hall was once a ward at Foxley. After the war, several local farmers and friends transported and re-erected it in Edwyn Ralph. For several years it served in its original form as our village hall until the 1990s, when it was rebuilt, still retaining the same shape as the original ward. In 1988, the village was visited by Dr Tom Grenon from the USA who had served at Foxley. He presented the hall with a plaque recording the fact that it was originally a ward of the American 123rd General Hospital. Last Tuesday, Martin Collins visited Thelma. He has published three books about the Americans during the war and she took him to see the hall, as he is researching facts about their hospitals during the Second World War.