Mary McMaster was the founder of St Luke's Hospital and McMaster House

Oxfordshire Blue Plaque unveiled on
McMaster House on 27 July 2022

Mary Isabella Blewitt Neville (Mrs McMaster) was born on 15 March 1914 at 5 Medway Villas, Gillingham, Kent. Her parents were Lionel John Neville Neville [sic] and Agnes Lilian Fyfe Blewitt, who were married at Kensington on 20 September 1910.

Mary's father was a career soldier who had served in the South African War. In the First World War he served as a Captain in the 5th Field Company of the Royal Engineers, but when Mary was only nine months old he died of wounds at the Casino Hospital in Boulogne on 17 December 1914 at the age of 36 (CWGC). His body (very unusually) was repatriated, and he was buried at Sloley, Norfolk in St Bartholomew's Church burial ground (grave details). His effects came to £84,266.

Following her father's death, Mary and her older sister Elizabeth Emelyn Blewitt Neville (born 1913) moved with their mother to Pendean House, West Lavington, Midhurst, Sussex. At the end of the war the family moved to Alvescot in Oxfordshire (where Mary was to remain for thirty years).

When she was 14, Mary was sent to the Godolphin School in Salisbury. She left school when she was 17 and spent two years at finishing schools, first in Paris and then in Florence. In 1938/9 she travelled around India with her sister.

At the time of the 1939 Register Mary (25) was in the civil nursing reserve and living at The Lodge in Witney Road, Witney with Lillian Neville (possibly her aunt). In the Second World War both Mary and her sister were sent as VADs (Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses) to the Emergency Medical Services Department that had taken over Banbury Workhouse and looked after elderly evacuees from London. Mary was then transferred as a VAD to Tusmore Park, where she nursed convalescent soldiers.

In January 1941 she went to the Middlesex Hospital for a three-year training as a physiotherapist (spending one of the years at at Stoke Mandeville Hospital).

Mary came to Headington immediately after the end of the war, when she was appointed on to the physiotherapy staff at the Wingfield-Morris Orthopaedic Hospital, working under G. R. Girdlestone. She remained in this job for ten years until 1955.

In 1952 she had a vision that she should collect a band of people to work together for the glory of God, and the Community of St Luke was formed. She leased 20 Linton Road from St John's College in July 1956, and this became St Luke's Home where she could nurse up to twenty patients.

Mary's mother Agnes Lilian Fyfe Neville was living at 382 Banbury Road, Oxford when she died at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Headington on 19 August 1956. She was buried in Norfolk with Mary's father. Her effects came to £7,749 18s. 2d.

In late 1963 at Oxford, Mary Isabella Blewitt Neville (then aged 49) married Ian McMaster, a Scottish-born widower sixteen years her senior. In the engagement notice published in The Times of 26 November 1963, Mary was described as the Warden of St Luke's Home, Linton Road, Oxford and Ian was living at 21 Park Town.

Ian McMaster

Mary's husband Ian McMaster had been living at 13 King Edward Street and working as a schoolmaster when he married his first wife Jane Harvey of Edinburgh at St Mary the Virgin Church on 12 August 1924, and their daughter Julian [sic] E. McMaster was born on 28 March 1928.

His first wife Jane McMaster died at the age of 59 in 1958 and was buried in Holywell Cemetery (Plot H.78).

Ian McMaster had served as British Consul in Florence from 1951 to 1959.

His daughter Julian married Anthony E. Harvey in Oxford in 1957.

Ian McMaster was living at 3 Garford Road, Oxford when he died at the original St Luke's Home in north Oxford on 2 February 1978. His funeral was at St Margaret's Church, and he was buried in Holywell Cemetery (Plot C.29). His headstone (right) mentions that Mary was his second wife and had founded St Luke's Hospital.

His effects came to £23,547.

St Luke's Hospital and McMaster House in Headington

In 1971 Mrs McMaster had purchased with her own money a freehold site in Latimer Road, Headington where she planned to build a nursing home with sheltered accommodation alongside, and following the death of her husband in 1978 she moved to1 Brookside in Headington, close to her chosen hospital site.

In 1981 St Luke's Hospital in Latimer Road opened with 56 beds (including double rooms), and all Mrs McMaster's nursing home patients had been transferred there by 1982. In that year she was awarded the OBE.

On 22 June 1984 the first tenants moved into the sheltered accommodation next door to St Luke's Hospital at McMaster House (below):

McMaster House was originally conceived as part of St Luke's Hospital but financial constraints meant that it was later leased out on a long-term peppercorn rent to the present sheltered housing provider, St Luke's Housing Society, which has a close working relationship with St Luke's Hospital

Mary McMaster died in Oxford at the age of 90 on 21 March 2004, and her funeral was at St Andrew's Church in Linton Road, Oxford. Her death notice in The Times stated that she was the founder of St Luke's Nursing Home and McMaster House. She appears to have been buried with her husband in Holywell Cemetery. (That death notice stated that she was buried in St Cross churchyard, but this closed in 1848.)

In 2019 St Luke's Hospital (above) was extended with an extra storey with twenty extra bedrooms on top and wrapping around the left-hand side of the old 1980s building, with a new reception area at ground level (16/01402/FUL). There is more information here from the architects about the extension and the living wall at the side.

St Luke's Hospital is a non profit-making registered charity.

• Mary McMaster, The Vision, the Quest and the Goal (Churchman Publishing, 1989)
• St Luke's Hospital
• St Luke's Housing Society (McMaster House)
• Oxford Mail, 31 December 1982, p. 3: Mary McMaster receiving the OBE
• Oxford Mail, 19 May 2009: “Home for elderly marks 25 years”