Horton General Hospital 4.27

The Horton General Hospital is a National Health Service hospital, part of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust located on the Oxford Road, in the Calthorpe ward of Banbury. The hospital has 236 beds and was founded in 1872 by Mary-Ann Horton. It was designed by the architect Charles Henry Driver. There is a 1980s mobile phone mast on the north part of the hospital.The Italianate Elms House on Oxford Road, is a substantial villa built in 1863 for Jonathan Gillet, one of the senior partners of Gillet’s Bank, is now the offices of the Primary Care Trust, which lies within the grounds of the Horton Hospital site.In 2005, there were rumours that the hospital might have to close. This led Banbury's MP, Tony Baldry, plus a large proportion of the town's population, to start a campaign to keep the hospital open. The rumours proved to be unfounded, since the plans had already been abandoned by both the NHS Trust and the Health Minister.In 2006, the Horton came into the limelight because Benjamin Geen, a nurse employed there, was convicted of two murders and fifteen counts of grievous bodily harm in April of that year. During December 2003 and January 2004 he had allegedly poisoned patients because he got a thrill out of trying to resuscitate them.