The Mount Felix Tapestry: Stitching Walton's War History

The Mount Felix Tapestry is a set of 44 embroidered panels telling the story of the New Zealand military hospital that once stood in Walton-on-Thames. Made between 2015 and 2017 by more than 600 volunteers in Britain and New Zealand, it is a very different, much newer piece of work from the embroidered memorial banner hospital patients made around 1919, which is now held in New Zealand’s national museum.

Mount Felix operated as No. 2 New Zealand General Hospital from July 1915, treating around 27,000 New Zealand servicemen before closing in March 1920. Its standing was reflected in a visit from King George V, Queen Mary and the Prince of Wales in 1917. The tapestry was created to tell that history through individual lives rather than numbers alone; for the fuller history of the hospital itself, see our guide to Mount Felix.

How the tapestry was made

The idea began with Emily Boulting, director of Riverhouse Barn Arts Centre in Walton, who came across the story of the Mount Felix hospital in 2013 and was struck by how little the town seemed to remember of it. The project she launched through Riverhouse Barn in April 2015 marked the centenary of the hospital’s opening. Scottish artist Andrew Crummy designed a shared visual framework for the panels, within which community groups and individual stitchers in Walton and in New Zealand embroidered the 44 finished panels, contributing more than 6,000 hours of work between them. The completed tapestry was formally opened in Walton on 23 April 2017 by the New Zealand High Commissioner and the Mayor of Walton. Despite the name, the finished work is technically a series of embroidered panels rather than a woven tapestry, though “tapestry” has stuck as its popular title.

Stories told in the panels

The panels focus on individuals rather than statistics. One tells the story of Edith “Poppy” Popplewell, a New Zealand nurse who survived the sinking of the hospital ship Marquette by a German torpedo on 23 October 1915 and went on to manage a ward at Mount Felix. A companion panel remembers Lorna Rattray, a nurse who did not survive the same sinking, and a further panel follows Hugh Acland, a surgeon who survived the Marquette and later became president of the hospital’s medical board in 1917. Another panel tells a lighter story: Lance Corporal Alexander Grant, recovering at the hospital, first noticed Walton resident Ruth Rosewell over an ivy-clad wall; the two later married. The surgeon Henry Percy Pickerill, who organised specialist treatment for men with severe facial and jaw injuries, also features.

The tapestry’s journey to New Zealand

The finished tapestry toured New Zealand for around 18 months from 2018, shown at museums and cultural venues around the country before returning to Britain in 2019. It has since been shown again in the Elmbridge area, including a 2022 exhibition and a tenth-anniversary display at Riverhouse Barn in 2025.

Not the same as the older war memorial banner

The tapestry is often confused with a much older piece of embroidery connected to the same hospital: a memorial banner worked by a recovering patient at Mount Felix around 1919, naming 18 soldiers and one nurse who died at the hospital, and installed at St Mary’s Church, Walton-on-Thames, in January 1920. It is now held by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington. The modern Mount Felix Tapestry, by contrast, is a twenty-first-century project, made almost a century after the banner and by an entirely different set of contributors.

What remains of Mount Felix today

Mount Felix House itself is gone. A serious fire in June 1966 led to the demolition of the main house and its tower in 1967. Only the stable block and clock tower survive, Grade II listed, a short walk from where the hospital once stood. Having previously been used as offices, the building is now home to a day nursery, kinderzimmer Walton-on-Thames.

Where the tapestry itself can be seen depends on what is currently on tour or on loan; there is no permanent public display, so anyone hoping to see it in person should check with Riverhouse Barn Arts Centre, where the project began, before visiting specially. For one of the individual stories behind the hospital’s patient numbers, see Arthur White’s story, a gunner treated at Mount Felix in 1917.