NEW evidence of a historic building being used as a wartime hospital has gone on show.

County Hall, in Northallerton, was used as an auxiliary hospital during the First World War.

Photographs, postcards and medical apparatus from the period are now on display at the county records office, in Malpas Road, Northallerton.

The exhibition, run by the British Red Cross Society, also features Red Cross uniforms and documents relating to the running of auxiliary hospitals in North Yorkshire.

Red Cross volunteers Anne Wall and Eileen Brereton stumbled across the artefacts while researching First World War hospitals for an exhibition at East Rounton Village Hall, also a former wartime hospital.

The Northallerton exhibition was opened last week by the chairman of North Yorkshire County Council, Councillor Margaret Hulme.

County councillor Chris Metcalfe said one particularly interesting collection in the exhibition related to Ursula Lascelles, a voluntary nurse from Slingsby, near Malton.

It includes many letters to Miss Lascelles from former patients and colleagues.

Coun Metcalfe said: "There are some gems amongst the collection, including a scrapbook of prints showing aspects of life in a Red Cross hospital in France and a casebook, which deals with treatment of patients and their wounds, as well as notes on food and the sterilising of equipment."

The collection is being catalogued by volunteers from the British Conservation Trust and the education and employment service in the York and North Yorkshire Primary Care Trust.

The exhibition will be open from 9.30am to 4pm, Monday to Friday, until the end of the month.

Admission is free, but donations to the Red Cross will be welcomed.