Camden Hospital Nurses' Quarters: Cloistered Veils

This newspaper article explores the history of the Camden Hospital Nurses' Quarters. The building was opened in 1962 by the NSW Minister for Health, WF Sheehan. Official proceedings were led by hospital chairman FJ Sedgewick. Construction started in mid-1961 on Menangle Road opposite the hospital. The three-story brick building had suspended concrete floors and was designed by architects Hobson and Boddington, influenced by mid-20th-century modernism and International Functionalism. Nurses' accommodation was an improvement on wartime military barracks with 40 single rooms and separate bathrooms. Nurses' accommodation was a problem from the opening of the cottage hospital in 1902 and remained an issue. The opening of the 1962 nurses' quarters failed to solve the issue. The issue did not disappear until hospital-based nurse training was transferred to colleges of advanced education in the mid-1980s, when nurses began living off-site.