Stannington had a wide geographical remit, taking children from Newcastle, Gateshead, Northumberland, Cumbria, Durham, Darlington, Rochdale, and North Yorkshire, but as you look through the patient files it becomes apparent that children came to Stannington from much further afield. WWII broke out in September 1939 and caused great upheavals around the world. Stannington saw the effects of this as much as anywhere else with its temporary relocation to Hexham, but in addition to this they also received a number of children who were evacuees, most of whom had been evacuated to Cumbria.

Patients 102/31 & 102/39 had both been evacuated from London in 1944, from Brixton and Wandsworth respectively. Both had been diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis whilst still in London and responsibility for their treatment was passed on to local medical officers in Cumbria who saw fit to send them to Stannington for sanatorium treatment, no doubt a starkly different environment to life in London.

Stannington saw child evacuees come from much further away than London with patients 87/112, 87/116, & 87/118, all Czech refugees, admitted in March and April 1941. The three patients were all girls aged 6, 11, & 13 respectively and had originally been sent to London but the onset of the blitz in 1941 saw them moved up to Cumbria. They had been placed in Edmond Castle, which had been the seat of the Graham Family of Edmond Castle until Eric Graham sold the entire estate in the late 1930s. The new owners, Henry Studholme Cartmell and Stanley Walton, saw fit to allow the castle to be used as a home for Czech refugees from around June 1940. The Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia had begun in March 1938, with the annexation of the Sudetenland, and was complete by March 1939. The threats from Nazi occupation saw a great number flee the country and the three girls that ended up approximately 800 miles from home in Stannington were only a tiny fraction of the number of Czech refugees to come to the UK during WWII.

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