Although the Medical Missionary Association was founded in 1878, it did not first open a hostel until 1885. Dr James L Maxwell was the first warden, being also the Secretary of the MMA at the time. He had been not only one of the founders of the MMA, but also a missionary in Taiwan before ill health forced him to return to Britain.

This first hostel was opened in Dr Maxwell’s home in Highbury, North London. As Phyllis Thompson put it in her history of the MMA,

‘At last there was a visible centre [for the MMA]… a place to which people would come and see for themselves young men who were taking medical training with the purpose of using their skills in Christ’s Name wherever He should choose to send them’.

By 1889, a scant four years later, the demand for accommodation among young medical students studying to go into the mission field was so great that a new hostel was purchased at 47 – 49 Highbury Park, and this, along with the later purchase of number 51 Highbury Park, was to remain the address of the MMA hostel for the next fifty years. In that time many pioneers of healthcare mission passed through the hostel (now named ‘Maxwell House’ after its first warden). One of the most famous of these was Dr Paul Brand, who pioneered uniquely innovative reconstructive surgery among leprosy patients in India, and who is perhaps better known to a younger audience as the co-author with Philip Yancy of a number of books on a Biblical approach to pain and suffering. Other notable residents included Jim Broomhall, who opened a clinic among the Nosu people on the Sino-Tibetan border, Douglas Johnson (the first secretary of IVF), Percy Barnden who founded Vom Hospital in Nigeria, James Fanstone of Anapolis Hospital in Brazil, and many others.

The outbreak of Word War II saw the only interruption to the hostel’s work, as it was turned over to families made homeless in the blitz for those five years. Yet in that time many changes occurred. The arrival of the NHS in 1947, and state grants for medical training meant students were not in so great a need of cheap accommodation. Would the old Highbury hostel be needed anymore? After the war, the families that had been re-housed stayed on, and the hostel was sold off with this question uppermost in the Council’s mind.

However, despite all the changes in the British medical scene, the need to create a Christian environment for medical students to motivate and equip them for mission remained, and it was agreed that there was a need to find a new hostel. With this in mind the MMA left London in 1947 for leafy Chiselhurst in Kent. However, this proved to be too far from London, so in 1952, under Dr Harry Bennett, the hostel moved back to London at 31 – 32 Bedford Place (near the British Museum). Harcourt House was opened in the mid-sixties in Canonbury Place in Islington. It was named after Miss Harcourt, who had been the warden of the Highbury Park hostel between 1912 and 1933. This was originally to be a separate hostel for female medical students, but with the closure of the Bloomsbury hostel in the seventies, Harcourt House eventually became the MMA’s primary ministry base, and was eventually relocated to 244 Camden Road where it has remained ever since. It is significant that many students who stayed at Harcourt House went with no intention of going into mission. Among them was Dr Hugh Oliver, who stated:

‘I had no thought of medical missionary work; indeed, I was even doubtful of joining the Christian Union! But in the homely atmosphere of Christian fellowship in which I found myself, and under the hand of God, my faith grew and my interest in medical mission was aroused’.

Dr Oliver served for many years at Mengo hospital in Uganda. His story is far from unique (see the following article!).

Today however, few medical students train to go into mission as their primary aim, and most medical schools have their own accommodation. Eventually, it became apparent that the role of the hostel was changing. Students from all over the world studying to return to their own nations have stayed at Harcourt House over the last few years. But slowly, the original aim of having a hostel to be a spiritual and practical base for Christian health professionals training for mission seemed less and less relevant, and the MMA has re-focussed its original aims on supporting students and professionals where they are, and working at supporting their spiritual needs through encouraging the work of bodies such as CMF, The Christian Therapists Network, Christian Dental Fellowship and Christian Nurses and Midwives. So it was that the hostel was finally closed down early in 2003. It may be that there will once again be another hostel or a similar base in the future, but for now MMA continues to focus its efforts primarily on developing the resource centre HealthServe, as a source of information and motivation for Healthcare Mission. While MMA continues to seek God’s direction for its ongoing work of ‘promoting real godliness amongst medical men and students, and to help forward Christian Medical work’, the legacy of Harcourt House and the hostels that preceded it will live on in the hundreds of thousands of lives touched by those men and women of God who followed His call to use their clinical skills in the service of His Kingdom.

‘Sent to Heal’, a history of the MMA and Harcourt House up to 1978 was written by Phyllis Thompson to celebrate the centenary of the MMA in 1978. Copies of this are available free on request from the MMA HealthServe office. For more information Email us: healthserve@cmf.org.uk