VISITORS to one of East Lancashire's most intimate museums can now take a step back in time after a new £10,000 installation.

Volunteers at Bacup Natural History Society Museum used a Heritage Lottery Fund grant to recreate a wartime Rossendale hospital.

The Yorkshire Street venue has been transformed into a snapshot of Fern Hill Auxiliary Hospital, which cared for soldiers in Stacksteads 100 years ago.

Bacup historian and author, Wendy Lord, is among those who have worked tirelessly to produce the diorama - a 3D model depicting a scene from the past.

Two mannequins represent a nurse and a wounded soldier in hospital blues and The Nat had authentic uniforms created using original fabrics. There is also a hospital bed, panelled walls and original equipment from the society’s collection, with hospital smells to add to the effect.

Wendy said: "This is now a permanent feature. It will be added to next year because we are having a sister’s uniform made and we will have two special days when people can ‘Meet the Nurse’ and ‘Meet the Tommy’.

“We are hoping to get schoolchildren to look around and learn more about the First World War and the local history of what happened close to their home.”

Accrington and Rossendale College students helped record the soldiers' accounts on information boards, which Wendy researched by combing old editions of the Bacup Times newspaper.

Work has been ongoing since July and the exhibition was launched exactly 100 years to the day since Fern Hill accepted the first of the 730 men it treated.

Among the guests at the opening was Stanley Everitt, whose father Fred had been a patient in the hospital in Christmas 1917 after he was injured and had his leg amputated. Fred was from Bacup and served in the 1st and 4th Battalion The East Lancashire Regiment.

Wendy, who has also published a book called Nursing Heroes: The Fern Hill Story, said: "There are no official records of the hospital and all we could find was some old Red Cross cards giving details some of the nurses and in 1920 there was a list published in the Bacup Times of all the staff who had worked in the hospital.”

Mr Everitt, 79, added: “My father died when I was 17. He was grand but I do not have a lot of memories of him. This is great.”