Scott Veterinary Clinic History

Scott’s has been a part of Bedford’s Community since the mid 1950’s…….
The practice is named after William Alexander ‘Alec’ Scott, who was born in Belfast in 1927. He trained at Trinity College, Dublin and qualified as a Vet in 1952.

Mr Scott first worked in practice in Falmouth before moving to Bedford in 1955, having already bought Mr Hill’s practice in 1954 at 49 Howbury Street, formerly an old fish shop!

The image here shows how Howbury Street appeared in the 1950’s.

The practice was initially two-man then, after dissolution of that partnership, Mr Scott ran the business single handed for nearly two years. In addition to farm animal medicine and particularly pig medicine [he was president of the Pig Veterinary Society],

Mr Scott was very enthusiastic about exotic species and was a committee member of the British Veterinary Zoological Society, for which he carried out zoo inspections. It was his passion for avian and exotic species that led to the supply of veterinary services to Woburn Wild Animal Kingdom [as it was known then] now called Woburn Safari Park.

Brian Cox came to the practice in the late 1950’s as a school student, with aspirations of becoming a vet and assisting Mr Scott on farm and house calls. Once qualified, in 1967, Brian Cox joined the practice and became Mr Scott’s business partner, in 1972.

Brian particularly enjoyed small animal surgery and equine work. He developed the equine side of the business, working closely with Bloomsbury Stud in Woburn, as their attending veterinary surgeon. In the mid 1980’s Mr Cox also provided sound advice for Radio Bedfordshire’s popular phone-in-vet programme on The Chris Burns Show.
Howbury Street originally had just one consulting room and on a Tuesday afternoon this room became an operating theatre.

The waiting room was the passage from the front door. The office had an open fire, around which some animals were laid to recover from their anaesthetic and there were 4 walk-in kennels in the ‘outhouse’.

The business dealt mostly with Large Animals in the early days. As the business expanded so did the numbers of vets and support staff and the requirement for development of the premises to accommodate more clinical facilities, consulting areas and a waiting ‘room’.

There were two significant upgrades during the Howbury Street years.
The first was a large extension accommodating a new office, theatre, prep-room and dark room [for manual development of x-rays]. The second involved further re-planning to accommodate a larger open plan waiting room and 2 consulting rooms.

At the time of Mr Scott’s retirement, after a long and highly respected career, there were 10 vets including a third partner Mr Elliot and soon to be partner Mr Hosegood, and over 25 support staff. One of those vets was a newly qualified Talitha March. Tally had seen practice at Scott’s as a student and, once qualified, was recruited to join the veterinary team.

There did however come a time where no further expansion of number 49 was possible, even after converting the upstairs flat into additional consulting rooms!

In 1997 the business was relocated to Goldington Road, where it stands today.

In April of that year, the premises was officially opened with a tree planting ceremony, with the guest of honour being Mr W.A Scott himself.

Here you see Brian Cox (Left) and Alec Scott (right).
The crab apple tree grows happily in the entrance to the grounds of the practice to this day.

Shortly after relocating to Goldington Road and after more than 25 years of dedication to the practice and the profession, Brian Cox retired from Scott’s.
Since it’s relocation in 1997 the practice premises have continued to evolve. The waiting room was expanded in 2006 to accommodate a separate cat waiting area and a pet shop. Since then we have also installed an exotic patient ward, small mammal ward, isolation ward, 2 further consulting rooms, a hydrotherapy suite and a dental suite.

In 2013 we opened our branch practices in Sharnbrook and Wixams. Our branch practices provide a valuable service to communities living in and around Bedford.

In 2014/15 the decision was made to cease large animal work, and a short while later, the equine work. This decision was not taken lightly. It was a huge change from how Scott Veterinary Clinic had functioned and evolved over many decades. This however provided us with an exciting opportunity for our team to further develop our small animal and exotic pet services, the latter of which was lead by Nathalie Wissink-Brown, whilst continuing to provide a high level of expert care and animal medicine.

Today’s Clinical Directors, Tally Clift, Vicki Farbon and Amy Revill have many years’ experience between them, serving the local community.

Our caring team offer outstanding patient care using the most modern and up to date diagnostic and patient monitoring equipment, including echocardiography, endoscopy, ultrasound, digital X-ray, multiparameter units, treadmill hydrotherapy, physiotherapy (including laser treatment) and surgical dentistry with X-ray. We also have a number of experienced certificate holders and Advanced Practitioners in disciplines such as Small Animal Medicine, Cardiology, Diagnostic Imaging and Emergency & Critical Care.

We are pleased to work with London Vet Services who provide an orthopaedic service using our hospital facilities which enables us to offer orthopaedic surgery to our clients, on-site.
Our team are passionate about patient care and welfare and we feel equally passionate about our teams care and welfare! In September 2022 we enlisted the services of Vets Now, who provide an out of hours emergency triage and critical care service for us on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, only, overnight. We provide emergency and critical care services at our hospital at ALL other times.

Our motivation for using the Vets Now service was to enhance our teams work-life balance whilst still providing outstanding 24hr hospital care. Our arrangement with Vets Now is slightly different to most vets who use their service, because our hospital patients remain in our care throughout their stay with us, even when Vets Now are taking the calls. We find this arrangement works very effectively, enabling our team to continue the uninterrupted care of your pets whilst supporting a more manageable and sustainable on-call rota for our team.

Scott Veterinary Clinic has been an accredited training and assessment practice for Veterinary Nurses since the scheme’s inception, has been a member of the RCVS Practice Standards scheme since 2004 and was recognised as an RCVS accredited Small Animal Veterinary Hospital in 2019, which we are incredibly proud of, and we continue to maintain the ever-evolving standards required by the scheme.

We are also a British Small Animal Veterinary Association Approved Clinic, a Cat Friendly Clinic, RWAF Rabbit Friendly vets, we are Canine Hydrotherapy Association Approved and Vetsure Graduate friendly.

We are committed to continue providing such a valued service in our community.

Thanks to Mr Scott and Mr Cox, who’s dedication and expertise laid the foundations for Scott Veterinary Clinic many years ago, we are still committed to providing professional and compassionate hospital care for your animals, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Alec Scott passed away in January 2012, after a highly respected career and happy retirement. We would like to pay tribute to his hard work, determination and dedication to this practice and the profession.

‘Meet the Team’

Acknowledgements

We would particularly like to thank Brian Cox for his contribution in writing this history.
Scotts would not be where it is today without the hard work, dedication and commitment that our Clinical Directors and practice team provide, in addition to the following significant contributors throughout its history:

Alec Scott
Brian Cox
Stuart Elliot
Martin Hosegood
Francesca Forster
Nathalie Wissink-Brown