Did you know that you can visit the Civil War field hospital in Manassas?
According to a release, staff at the Ben Lomond Historic Site at 10321 Sudley Manor Drive have been working on providing an authentic experience for visitors to the former field hospital, taking it back to the days of the Battle of First Manassas in 1861.
The historic site has history outside of the Civil War, also serving as a plantation in 1832, and a dairy farm in the 1920s and 30 – but the focus for the site has always been the Civil War-era.
“When the site opened to the public in 2011 as a historic house museum, visitors could see authentic surgical tools, rooms in the house that served as impromptu operating and recovery rooms, recreations of bloody bandages, half-eaten plates of food and weapons,” stated a release.
Scents were even incorporated into the experience along the way.
“Everything we have inside the house recreates the sights of the Civil War hospital where visitors… can interact with all the objects inside the house,” Gibbons-Backus said. “We’ve tried to add smells to the hospital, so not only can you see the hospital now, you can smell hints of gangrene, smoke, gunpowder, filth; what would have historically been found in the hospital,” stated Ben Lomond Historic Site Manager Paige Gibbons-Backus in a release.
Now, the site staff is adding historical sounds.
“We have strived to create an even more immersive experience for our visitors in that we have started adding audio. So, not only can you see and smell the hospital, now you can actually hear the sounds of it. You can hear the boom of cannon fire. You can hear the sound of soldiers who are wounded, who are dying within its walls. You can hear the struggle and the chaos of the lack of supplies, the lack of medical staff. You can really get a sense of how overwhelming this hospital was after July 21, 1861,” stated Gibbons-Backus in a release.
Tours of the field hospital site are held Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and last around an hour. For more information, call 703-367-7872 or email historicpreservation@pwcgov.org.
