Blenheim Palace, Sir Winston Churchill’s birthplace, was converted into a convalescent hospital over a 100 years ago.
The health facility, which opened in September 1914 in the palace’s Long Library, could accommodate 50 soldiers and they also fashioned a surgery room, a reading room and a smoking room on the premises.
Today, the estate in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, is a World Heritage Site and a thriving tourist attraction which welcomes more than 800,000 visitors a year.
Then and now photographs show how the library looked over 100 years ago when it was a hive of activity with nurses tending to rows of bed-ridden soldiers.