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Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary

Featured / Harriet Richardson / 2 Comments

On a recent trip to Dumfries & Galloway, staying in a beautiful house on the coast at Rockcliffe, I called in at two former hospitals in Dumfries – both former iterations of the Royal Infirmary. This is a hospital with a long history that has taken it to four separate sites.

*The former Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary, photographed November 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

The original Dumfries Infirmary was built to the west of Nith Bank, at High Dock, on land that bordered the river. The foundation stone was laid on 11 July 1777, and the infirmary received its first patients in 1778 – transferred from temporary premises. In 1807 the infirmary was granted a royal charter, and its benefactors incorporated as the Governors of the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary.

*Engraved view of the original Dumfries Infirmary, dated 1778, from John D. Comrie’s* History of Scottish Medicine to 1860, *London, 1927.* ref: M0009675: Wellcome Collection.

In the later 1860s the infirmary’s governors decided to relocate eastwards, to higher ground, and build a new hospital on a pavilion plan. This was the gold-standard in hospital design at the time, based on the principles of natural, cross-ventilation to minimise cross-infection. The governors held a competition for the design of the new hospital in 1868. A sum of £10,000 was proposed for the scheme, that was to include the architect’s fee and the salary of a clerk of works. The winning architect was John Starforth, whose practice was based in Edinburgh. Three years earlier Starforth had won the competition to design Greyfriars Church in Dumfries. He also went on to design the infirmary at Berwick-upon-Tweed, built in 1872-4, and Greenock’s poorhouse and parochial asylum (later Ravenscraig Hospital) built in 1876-9.

*Postcard of the former Royal Infirmary, probably* c.1900

The OS Town Plan of 1893 shows the basic layout of the new hospital. The western range comprised a central administration block flanked by ward wings. To the rear a central corridor led to two further ward pavilions. These two-storey pavilions contained wards on each floor on either side of the central spine corridor. At the farthest end of the wards, towers housed the lavatories.

*The Royal Infirmary on the OS Town Plan, surveyed in 1893 CC-BY (NLS)*

The foundation stone was laid on 16 September 1869. A report in The Builder in that year claimed that Starforth had amended the design to reduce the cost, but he refuted the accusation, stating that the lowest tender had been £8,650 9s 8d. (The highest was £10,875.) An architectural drawing of the infirmary was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1870. The Builder jibbed at the skyline, which it thought unsatisfactory and commented that the design had ‘some degree of architectural pretension’.

North range of the Royal Infirmary, showing the ward pavilion on the north side of the administration block. *(Photographed November 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*)

The building contractor for the infirmary was James Halliday, mason, and the contractor for the joiner work was John Mein. Mein also paid for the ‘cathedral glass’ in the central window above the main entrance. This was designed by James Ballantine of Edinburgh, in a geometric rather than figurative scheme. It featured pale shades of amber, green and blue in the upper section bordered by deeper shades of the same colours. The other main features of the entrance front were the statues of St Luke (the good physician) and Hygeia that flank the central window. These were executed by the local mason and sculptor, John Currie. Currie’s best-known works were ‘The Covenanter’ and ‘Old Mortality and his Pony’. He also carried out the figure of Dr Henry Duncan on the façade of the Dumfries Savings Bank.

*Central window above the entrance with figures of St Luke and Hygeia, November 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

Building work was largely completed towards the end of 1872, and an official opening of the infirmary took place in May 1873. Although the building was considerably larger than the old infirmary, it had the same number of beds (100). About a year after the new infirmary opened, an ice house was built on the site of the historic Christie’s Well, to the north of the infirmary. The door surround of the icehouse with two sculptured herms supporting a banner bearing the text ‘Christys Well’ was preserved and subsequently relocated to the new infirmary at Bankend Road. (There is a photograph of the door surround on the Art Uk website. The well is named Christie’s elsewhere, but was also known as St Queran’s Well.)

*The Jubilee Block and to the rear the King Edward VII block. Additions to the infirmary in the 1890s. Photograph ©️ H. Blakeman*

The icehouse was later replaced by the Jubilee Block, built in 1897 as a sanatorium for patients with tuberculosis. Another detached block was added in 1894 for infectious diseases. Both were built to designs by James Barbour. However, in 1910 the infirmary ceased to admit infectious diseases and subsequently both blocks were converted to staff quarters. The 1894 block was substantially rebuilt as a nurses’ hostel and became known as the King Edward VII Memorial block.

*Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary on the 25-inch OS map revised in 1899, showing later additions CC-BY (NLS)*

During the Second World War two additional ward huts were built to the south of the main building as part of the Emergency Medical Scheme increasing its bed complement to 170. The war-time survey of hospitals conducted for the Department of Health for Scotland criticised the design of the wards, condemning them as no longer satisfying modern requirements for medical care. The hutted annexes were cramped, nearly all the specialist units were too small, and the out-patient department particularly congested. Rebuilding on a new site was recommended, the old infirmary might then be adapted for the chronic sick and infirm.

*The Royal Infirmary on the large-scale OS map surveyed in 1962 CC-BY (NLS)*

In 1948 the infirmary transferred to the NHS, coming under the Western Regional Hospital Board based in Glasgow. With limited funds, no action was taken in the early years of the NHS to rebuild the infirmary on a new site. Instead, some modernisation was carried out in the 1960s, including the addition of a day room for patients. Nevertheless, rebuilding was the long-term goal, enshrined in the Hospital Plan for Scotland published by the Department of Health for Scotland in 1962.

*Former Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary, viewed from the north-west, photographed November 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

In the Hospital Plan, ten new district general hospitals were proposed at Inverness, Dumfries, Ayr, Kilmarnock, Coatbridge, Motherwell, Greenock, Paisley and Kirkcaldy, and in West Lothian. All but three of these were in the Western Region, and the new hospital for Dumfries was the first of those to be completed in 1974. In the late 1960s it was planned to adapt the former infirmary into a geriatric unit. The site for the new hospital was further out of Dumfries, fronting Bankend Road at the northern tip of the Crichton Royal Hospital site.

*The 1970s Dumfries District General, now Mountainhall Treatment Centre. Photographed in November 2025, ©️ H. Blakeman*

The foundation stone was laid on 16 September 1970 by the Chairman of the Board of Management for Dumfries and Galloway Hospitals, J. Wyllie Irving. The architects were the Glasgow-based Boswell, Mitchell and Johnson, and this was their first large-scale, health-care project. That said, it was the smallest of the new District Generals, with 424 in-patient beds. Frank Campbell, one of the partners in the firm, explained that the architects had aimed to design a building that was on a human scale, ‘integrated into the site and surroundings in a natural and unobtrusive manner’. They felt that a ‘massive multi-storey building’ would be oppressive. ‘It is an emotional experience going into a hospital. We attempted to create a less intimidating and more friendly atmosphere’. [quoted in Irving, Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary…, p.97.]

*Mountainhall Treatment Centre (formerly Dumfries District General) photographed November 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

The hospital was designed on a linear plan, as then advocated by the Scottish Home and Health Department, taking the form of a four-storey, offset cross-shaped block. At the lower ground level were service areas, including staff dining and changing rooms, kitchen, stores and plant rooms. On the ground floor were the outpatients unit and the main diagnostic departments and treatment areas along with administrative offices. On the upper three floors were the ward units, comprising single and four-bedded rooms with views over the landscaped grounds, those on the west looking towards the Galloway hills. The landscaping of the site with trees, shrubs and flowers aimed to increase the sense of peace and spaciousness. Now the mature trees set off the east side of the infirmary, though some of the planting must have been lost to later additions.

*Mountainhall Treatment Centre, photographed through the trees from the east, November 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

The building contractors for the new infirmary were Melville, Dundas and Whitson of Glasgow. As with many of the large-scale NHS building projects of this period works were impacted by the economic crisis and industrial action, but nevertheless were not seriously delayed. The contractors handed over the new hospital in 1974. A period of ‘commissioning’ ensued, during which time the hospital was equipped and made ready for opening, including recruiting additional staff. Additional staff accommodation was provided in the form of eleven terraced houses for married staff, one for the matron, and flats for 126 other nursing staff. These are located to the south west of the main building. The official opening by Queen Elizabeth took place in 1975.

*Dumfries Dental Centre, one of the more recent additions to the site. Photographed in November 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

Various additions were made to the site, including the Cresswell Maternity Unit, a PFI scheme, built around 2002; a cancer care centre added in 2003, and a dental centre in 2008 (Davis Duncan, architects – now NORR). With the opening of the new Royal Infirmary, the 1970s hospital was refurbished as a day treatment centre (Ryder Architecture for NHS Dumfries and Galloway, Balfour Beatty Construction). The transfer of patients to the new Royal Infirmary at Cargenbridge from Bankend Road began in December 2017. Since then NHS Dumfries & Galloway has moved its headquarters and main admin offices to Mountainhall, following the closure and sale of Crichton Hall.

Sources: The Builder, 10 Jan. 1865, p.416; 14 Nov. 1868, p.839; 3 July 1869, p.521; 5 March 1870: Gordon Irving, Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary – the first two hundred years, Dumfries, 1975, passim.: Dumfries & Galloway Standard, 3 Jan. 1872, p.7; 7 Feb 1872, p.7; 31 July 1872, p.5; 25 Dec 1872, p.5: Daily Record, 7 Dec. 2017, online: The Scotsman, 16 Oct 2019, online: For the new DGRI see the report on the BBC website here (retrieved Dec. 2025).

Obituary of John Starforth: Building News, 27 May 1898, p.741: Information on the local sculptor, John Currie, from William McDowall, History of the Burgh of Dumfries, Edinburgh 1867, p.864

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July News in August

Featured / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

July was not my most productive month, but I have enjoyed being side-tracked by a few enquiries. These have had me investigating the birthplace of Vivian Stanshall – the musician, writer, and co-founder of the Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band (born in Oxford’s Radcliffe Maternity Home, which is not in Shillingford as given in his Wikipedia entry); hospitals built by E H Burgess Ltd (later E H Burgess & Son Ltd) on which Frederick Charles Kent (1883 – 1951) was the foreman; identifying a nursing home in Glasgow at No.6 Claremont Street (established around 1915 and still going in the 1960s); and failing to identify a chapel that may or may not have been part of a hospital.

Mystery Chapel

The Chapel was photographed in the 1950s, by someone who at that time was living in St Paul’s Cray, near Orpington, then in Kent now in the London Borough of Bromley. He suffered from TB and was in hospital from late 1953 to the Spring of 1956, latterly at Eversfield Hospital, Hastings. So far I have drawn a blank on the chapel’s identity, so if anyone recognises it, please get in touch. It may have nothing to do with a hospital, and could be a private chapel, but, though small and apparently isolated, it looks plain and simple in a manner that would be fitting for a hospital or children’s home. There is a glimpse of what might be a water tower on the left. This suggests that this might have been one of the large asylums built in the later 19th and early 20th century that once fringed outer London, but to me the chapel looks too small for that. It doesn’t match any of the ones that I know of in Kent, Sussex or Surrey.

Uppingham

As well as enquiries, I have also received some interesting and useful information. Out of the blue, I was sent a piece of research into a former Humphrey’s isolation hospital in Uppingham. The building was demolished in the early 1990s. It had been put up around 1892-3 by the Rural District Councils of Uppingham, Hallaton and Gretton which combined to form a joint hospital committee and purchased a ‘temporary iron hospital’ from Humphrey’s of Knightsbridge. The hospital was erected on land leased from the Earl of Gainsborough, on the north side of the town, not far from the gas works.

Although it seems that the hospital was primarily intended for smallpox cases it was only ever used on a handful of occasions, mostly for scarlet fever cases. The first time it was used was September 1899 following an outbreak of scarlet fever in Uppingham when five patients were admitted. The 1912 annual report of the County Medical Officer of Health for Rutland noted that the ‘small iron isolation hospital at Uppingham’ had frequently proved useful in emergencies but was inadequate to meet the needs of the district. It was situated in a grass field with no approach by road. The horse-drawn ambulance had to drive through fields to get to it. Constructed of galvanised iron raised on blocks to a height of about 1 ft off the ground, it contained two wards, each about 19ft long, 12 ft high and 12ft wide, with boarded floors and walls lined with matchwood. A small room off one of the wards was used as a bedroom by the nurse, and there was also a store room, kitchen and scullery, and two ‘pan closets’. (Bed pans had to be taken through the kitchen to the scullery for cleaning and disinfection.) Two tortoise stoves provided heating in the wards, and the windows which provided the only ventilation could not be fully opened. The isolation hospital continued to be used on an ad hoc basis until the mid-1920s when the land was sold and the Rural Council given notice to quit. The hospital was put up for sale in 1929 and subsequently converted into a house.

*Uppingham’s isolation hospital in 1993 shortly before it was demolished ©️ Mark O’Brien* *for composite photograph based on photography ©️ Beverly Hubbard all (rights reserved)*

Historic Hospitals in the Highlands of Scotland

*Lawson Memorial Hospital, Golspie, photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

July saw the publication of the latest in the History of Highlands Hospitals‘ series. This volume is the seventh that Jim Leslie has researched and written with his son Steve. It covers the hospitals of Sutherland, an area that I passed through on the way to pick up the ferry to Orkney in June. On that trip we had stopped in Golspie to take some snaps of the Lawson Memorial Hospital and had broken our journey at Helmsdale where I took a walk up the hill to find the former General Pope Maternity Hospital. I have started revising the Highland page, adding in some recent photographs, and the new book will help add in some more information there.

*The former General Pope Hospital in Helmsdale, viewed from across the allotments, photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

The next volume in the series will cover Caithness. On our trip north we also did a tour of (most of) the surviving hospitals in Wick – the main centre for the hospital services in the county. I was particularly interested to see that the old Bignold Hospital has been converted into housing – it was empty and boarded up when I first visited the site in about 1989.

*Former Bignold Hospital, Wick, photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

Lincoln County Hospital

The Lincolnshire page on the website is one of the many pages that is sorely lacking in information. I was prompted to start revising the page following a wander round Lincoln County Hospital on a brief trip south in July.

*The former County Hospital, dating from the 1770s, photographed around 1878 at the time that the new hospital was built. Reproduced from Thomas Sympson’s ,* Short Account of the Old and of the new Lincoln County Hospitals, *1878* [Internet Archive]

The original hospital is amongst the earliest to be established in England outside London, first opening in 1769 in adapted premises and moving to a new purpose-built hospital in 1777 designed by John Carr of York. This building continued in use until 1878, and then became known as the Bishop’s Hostel having been converted to a theological college. It was renamed Chad Varah House in the 1990s (after the founder of the Samaritans and former student at the college) when it was acquired by the University of Lincoln. Appropriately, it housed the department of Conservation and Restoration, and History of Art and Design. That did not last, however, and the building has since been converted to apartments, named Bailgate Court, with a new infill building on the north fronting Drury Lane (in place of a 1960s extension). This adaptation, by Jonathan Hendry Architects, gained an RIBA East Midlands Conservation Award in 2021.[RIBA, Architecture.com accessed 8 Aug. 2025]

*The new county hospital photographed in 1878 when it was newly completed. Reproduced from Sympson’s* Short Account… *1878.*

The replacement for Carr’s building was built further out of the city in 1876-8 to designs by Alexander Graham who was appointed following an architectural competition. Only a small fragment of the Victorian hospital survives on the present site, much of it having been demolished in 2011. The present hospital mostly dates from the 1980s.

Lincoln County Hospital, main entrance, photographed in July 2025 *©️ H. Blakeman*

The 1870s hospital was designed on the standard pavilion plan that had become the norm in the 1860s, in this instance comprising a central administration block connected to ward pavilions on either side by cross-ventilated corridors. The administration block also had a small ward for the reception of accident cases and two eye wards. Here too were the operating theatre and associated ward, the out-patients’ department and dispensary, board room and staff accommodation.

*Ground plan of Lincoln County Hospital, as originally designed, published in 1878* *in Sympson’s* Account.

When the hospital opened in 1878 only the southern ward pavilions had been built. The OS map from 1904 (below) shows this arrangement with an additional block on the west side, which opened in 1892, and the laundry and boiler house added to the north-east in 1901. These additions and alterations were constructed to the designs of William Watkins, architect and surveyor to the hospital.[Stamford Mercury, 10 June 1892, p.6.: Lincolnshire Chronicle, 12 July 1901, p.8.]

*Lincoln County Hospital from the 25-inch OS map revised in 1904-5 CC-BY (NLS)*

*South end of the eastern ward pavilion of the original hospital, the only fragment of the 1878 hospital that remains on site. Photographed in July 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

In 1911 a new ward was opened. This seems to have been an extension northwards of the original eastern ward pavilion and is broadly similar in design. During the First World War it was used for military personnel returning to civilian use in 1919. After the war, the Red Cross distributed some of their surplus funds from donations etc to hospitals that had been used for military casualties. Lincoln County Hospital received around £4,000, which provided a welcome addition to funds.[Louth and North Lincolnshire Advertiser, 22 Feb. 1930, p.2.]

To the left is the ward extension built in 1911, with the earlier ward pavilion and segment of the link-corridor to the right. Photographed in July 2025, *©️ H. Blakeman*

A separate nurses’ home was added in 1914-15 designed by Watkins in a handsome neo-Georgian style. It is probably the most attractive of the surviving pre-war buildings on the site and is now a listed building. Originally it comprised the eastern H-plan block and had 52 bedrooms, ten of which were slightly larger, had bay windows, and were allocated to the nursing sisters. There was no dining-room as the nurses took their meals in the administration block of the hospital [The Builder, 18 June 1915, p.563. Historic England listing gives the architect as H. G. Gamble, citing the Pevsner architectural guide as their source.]

North front of the Nurses’ Home, there is a matching left-hand projecting wing out of shot, photographed July 2025 *©️ H. Blakeman*

*Lincoln County Hospital Nurse’ Home, architectural perspective from* The Builder, *1915*

*Ground- and First-Floor-plans of the new nurses’ home at Lincoln County Hospital built 1914-15, from* The Builder, *1915*

The home was extended to the west in the 1930s in sympathetic style, the extension having a lively west front with a row of canted bay windows topped by moulded decoration. There were plans for a similar extension on the east side, but this was never built. The architect was William Watkins’s son, William Gregory Watkins, who had taken over his father’s practice in 1918. Linked to the extension further west is a single-storey recreation hall, probably dating from the 1950s or early ’60s.

*Lincoln County Hospital, Nurses’ Home, viewed from the north west, photographed in July 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

The Red-cross funds were put towards building a new ward in 1923-4. However, it remained unopened until December 1926 as the hospital could not afford the running costs.[Lincolnshire Echo, 10 April 1924, p.4: Stamford Mercury, 25 Dec. 1926, p.4.]

*Lincoln County Hospital on the OS map revised in 1938 CC-BY (NLS)*

The nurses’ home extension was part of a wider scheme of redevelopment at the County Hospital made possible by an improvement in its income following the institution of ‘voluntary contributory institutions’. Often known as the ‘penny in the pound’ schemes these involved local businesses and employers contributing a small portion of their employees’ wages in return for which their employees would have access to treatment in the hospital. This method of generating a regular income became a vital life-line for voluntary hospitals at this time.

*The early 1930s ward wing, photographed when it was no long in use in 2006 ©️ Richard Croft from Geograph*

By 1928 plans were being formed to increase the number of beds, extend the out-patients’ facilities, replace the operating theatres and generally modernise the hospital. An appeal was launched in 1930 and tenders put out the following year for the first section comprising two new wards in a two-storey wing to the north of the original western ward block (containing Dixon and Johnson wards). The ward wing was completed in 1933, but, like the earlier new ward, could not be opened straight away. This time opening had to wait for the completion of a new boiler house, the extension to the nurses’ home, and the new kitchen, in order to provide the necessary services for the increased number of patients. It had only partly opened by the beginning of 1937. [Lincoln Leader and County Advertiser, 21 April 1928: Lincolnshire Echo, 16 May 1931, p.1; 5 Jan. 1933, p.6: Stamford Mercury, 19 Feb. 1937, p.11.]

Lincoln County hospital, boiler-house. The tall brick chimney probably dates from the 1930s, but the boiler-house in front is part of the post-war redevelopments on the site. Photographed in July 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman

When the hospital was visited as part of a national hospital survey conducted by the Ministry of Health during the Second World War (as part of its planning for post-war hospital services), it had 206 beds, 28 of which were in extensions that had come into use after 1938. The published report noted that the buildings were for the most part old, but that the out-patients’ department had only recently opened. The new X-ray department had not been completed when the surveyors visited the hospital. Their report concluded that although the buildings of the hospital were for the most part old-fashioned, they were serviceable.[Ministry of Health, Hospital Survey. The Hospital Services of the Sheffield and East Midlands Area, HMSO, 1945.]

*Maternity Unit, Lincoln County Hospital, photographed in July 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

Just to the east of the nurses’ home is the maternity unit, which was formally opened by Princess Margaret on 4 December 1968. The architects were Adam, Holden & Pearson in association with Watkins, Croombes and Partners. The design provided 78 consultant beds, 26 GP beds and 8 private beds along with a special care baby unit with 21 cots, ante-natal clinic and midwifery training school. The wards were planned on the race-track plan – where the wards encircled a central service core. [The Hospital, January 1969 p.30.] The 1980s redevelopment of the site was part of the NHS long term planning for Lincoln County Hospital to take over all the acute work in Lincoln from St George’s Hospital – with the intention that St George’s would be rebuilt as a geriatric unit.[NHS, Hospital Plan for England and Wales, 1962.] The first phase of the new hospital was completed in 1985 and officially opened by Princess Diana. Phase two was fully opened in 1993 and officially opened by Princess Anne.

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Orkney Revisited

Featured / Harriet Richardson / 1 Comment

I first visited the Orkney islands in 1989 when I was working on a survey of Scottish hospitals. I had not been back until June this year. This post provides a short account of the surviving historic hospital buildings in Kirkwall and how the hospital service has developed since the first general hospital opened there 200 years ago.

*The new Balfour Hospital, seen as you drive into Kirkwall from the south, photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

As far as the hospitals on Orkney are concerned, the biggest change since the 1980s has been the opening of a new Balfour Hospital on the outskirts of Kirkwall for NHS Orkney. It was built in 2015-19 and officially opened in May 2021. The architects were Keppie Design.

*Views of the main entrance hub of the new Balfour Hospital, photograph ©️ H. Blakeman*

The new Balfour is the third iteration of the hospital which first opened in a converted house in Main Street, Kirkwall, in 1845. It was named after John Balfour, local landowner and former MP for Orkney and Shetland, much of whose fortune was derived from India as an official in the East India Company. In 1836, Balfour had appointed a board of trustees with instructions to use dividends from Mexican Government Bonds for ‘building, furnishing and endowing a hospital or infirmary with a dispensary … for the reception of such sick and wounded persons as may be recommended by those appointed by my said Trustees for that purpose.’ ¹

*The original Balfour Hospital on Main Street, Kirkwall, now the West End Hotel, photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

The house in main street that was acquired for the hospital was built in 1824 by William Richan of Rapness, at least in part to satisfy the extravagant tastes of his wife, Esther. Richan had borrowed heavily, and put his affairs in the hands of trustees before his death in the Kirkwall house in 1830 after which it was sold to a merchant, James Shearer from whom it was purchased by Balfour’s trustees as a hospital. The house was listed in 1971 at Category B. The list description mentions an anecdote about Richan’s wife Esther, who was reputed to have won a wager that she could eat the most expensive breakfast by putting a £50 note inside a sandwich.²

*Kirkwall on the 25-inch OS map revised in 1900, showing the Balfour Hospital and Fever Hospital (towards the top right) and the Combination Poorhouse (bottom left), CC-BY (NLS)*

Originally the Balfour was called the ‘Orkney Hospital’. This was suggested by John Balfour, the founder, in preference to the proposed ‘Trenaby’s Orkney Infirmary’. The first resident matron was a Mrs Dearness, appointed in May 1845, and the first patient was admitted on 6 October that year on the recommendation of the surgeon, Peter Flett. In 1853 the name was changed to the Balfour Orkney Hospital, which was soon shortened to the familiar Balfour Hospital.

Fever Hospital built adjacent to the original Balfour Hospital in 1890-91, *photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

Patients suffering from infectious diseases were admitted from the start, initially within the main building but in the 1870s one of the neighbouring houses was acquired and an additional nurse appointed specifically to care for the fever patients. Additional accommodation near by was acquired in the early 1880s. These ad hoc and not altogether satisfactory arrangements were remedied in 1890-1 when a new purpose-built fever hospital was constructed on the adjoining ground. The plans were drawn up by the local architect, Thomas Smith Peace senior. The new fever hospital had three wards and 14 beds together with staff accommodation.³

The second Balfour Hospital built in the 1920s and known as the Garden Memorial Building, *photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

The second Balfour Hospital was built in the 1920s following a proposal first made in March 1914 when the widow and family of Robert Garden offered funding for the purpose. Robert Garden had made his fortune in retail, with a fleet of cargo vessels and floating shops serving the islands. His widow, Margaret Garden, wrote to inform the Balfour Hospital Trustees of her family’s wish to present a hospital of ‘up-to-date design’ as a gift to Orkney, adding that details regarding the building, accommodation and site were already under consideration.⁴

Central entrance block of the Garden Memorial Building, *photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

The outbreak of the First World War a few months later meant that the project was put on hold and seemingly not taken up again until 1926. The new hospital became known as the Garden Memorial Building and provided 19 beds in two six-bed wards, single rooms and a bed for maternity cases, as well as the usual offices, staff accommodation, out-patients department and operating theatre. The old Balfour and fever block seem to have continued in use for some years after the opening of the new hospital, but had closed by 1938 and was sold in 1940. In 1943 the original hospital became the West End Hotel, which is remains to this day, while the former fever hospital has been converted to housing.

Possibly one of the former EMS hutted ward blocks to the rear of the Garden Memorial Building, with later additions and alterations, *photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

Wider view of the rear of the second Balfour Hospital, *photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

*The former Balfour Hospital from the large-scale OS map revised in 1964, CC-BY (NLS)* *The long blocks on the north side are the additions during the Second World War and the buildings in the photograph above are on that site.*

During the Second World War two hutted ward blocks were added to the rear of the Garden Memorial Building as part of the war-time Emergency Medical Scheme. These provided 84 beds on war-time standards – the beds more densely packed than in peace time. Another temporary ward block of timber was added, but was used for staff accommodation in addition to the nurses’ home. Post-war additions included a maternity unit in 1966 and a health centre in the early 1970s. The latter was officially opened in April 1973 by Sir John Brotherton, the Chief Medical Officer for Scotland.

Post-war addition on the east side of the second Balfour Hospital, with ‘Night Entrance’ to left, *photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

*Early 1970s Health Centre* to south-west of the Garden Memorial Building at the Balfour Hospital, *photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

There are also some later blocks to the rear of the site, possibly a laundry and/or boiler house that look to have been added in the 1980s-90s. All the buildings are low-rise, mostly single storey, and a good example of the incremental expansion of a small general hospital in the twentieth century. The site is currently (June 2025) surrounded by security fencing and the buildings mostly empty.

Service building to rear of second Balfour Hospital, possibly a laundry, possibly 1980s, *photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

Apart from the Balfour, there are two other surviving former hospitals in Kirkwall: Eastbank, a sanatorium and infectious diseases hospital established by Orkney County Council in 1936-7, and the Orkney County Home, built as a poorhouse in 1883 but which had some maternity beds and beds for the chronic sick in the mid-twentieth century.

Eastbank House, Kirkwall, *photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

Eastbank Hospital comprised two ward blocks built to either side of a substantial private house of twenty rooms, with cottage and outhouses standing on two acres of ground. The Council had previously acquired the seaplane station at Scapa after the First World War, first used as a temporary isolation hospital in 1920 and later adapted as a tuberculosis hospital opening in 1924. The new hospital at Eastbank opened in 1937 with 40 beds: 24 in the infectious diseases block on the north side of Eastbank house, and 16 in the TB block to the south, where most rooms opened out onto a veranda that faced south-west.

Former isolation block, Eastbank Hospital, *photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

Building on the site of the TB sanatorium block on the Eastbank Hospital site, possibly the altered original ward block, *photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

*Eastbank Hospital on the large-scale OS map revised in 1964 CC-BY (NLS)*

The poorhouse opened in 1883 with accommodation for 50 paupers, the plans having been drawn up by Thomas Smith Peace senior. There had been a few small poorhouses dotted about the islands previously, while some paupers were boarded out with families or were able to gain ‘out-door relief’ (money from the Guardians to enable the poor to remain in their own homes). Birsay and Harray on the Mainland were operating a poorhouse by 1861 near Douby. At the south of Kirbister there was a parish poorhouse for Orphir, and Deerness parish had a poorhouse near Grindigar. On Westray there was a poorhouse at Kirkbrae, established in the same year as the Kirkwall poorhouse. This was also intended to provide isolation for infectious cases. It was a small building of four rooms. There were similarly small poorhouses on Papa Westry and Sanday.⁵

*Orkney Home, the former poorhouse building, photographed in about 1989.*

The Kirkwall poorhouse became known as the County Home by the early 1940s when it had 52 beds and accommodated a mix of the elderly, infirm, chronic sick, ‘mentally impaired’, and neglected children as well as two maternity beds. The building had outwardly changed little in the later 1980s, but within the last twenty years has been converted to flats, raising the single storey side and rear wings to the same height as the central two-storey range. New sheltered housing has been built to the rear of the old poorhouse.

Former Orkney Home, with major additions and alterations as part of its conversion to housing, *photographed in June 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

During the twentieth century there were various moves to reform medical care in Britain. One that addressed the particular problems of caring for the sick in the remoter parts of Scotland was the Highlands and Islands Medical Service, established during the First World War. This scheme had released government funding to improve the health services in remote areas where it was difficult to recruit medical staff. The resident surgeon at the Balfour Hospital in Kirkwall had been appointed through the scheme. The most radical reform, of course, was the establishment of the National Health Service in 1948. In order to provide a free and equitable service to the entire population it was first necessary to understand the nature and extent of the existing health services. Even before the exact form of the NHS had been decided upon, steps had been taken to establish the condition and function of existing hospitals. A national survey had been carried out during the Second World War, begun in 1942. The results of the survey were published in 1946. The reports on Orkney and Shetland form an appendix to the volume covering the North-Eastern Region of Scotland.

*Part of the new Balfour Hospital. The attention to outside space is noticeable, with sheltered planted garden areas such as the above*, *photograph* ©️*H. Blakeman*

*Ground floor schematic plan of the Balfour*

The Survey acknowledged that the main problem on Orkney was its isolation from the larger medical centres and recommended that a re-organised hospital service should link Orkney more closely with one of the mainland regions. The traditional link had been with Edinburgh, largely because many Orkney doctors were Edinburgh graduates and many Orkney families had relatives in Edinburgh. Some patients were sent to Aberdeen, and Orkney County Council had an agreement with Aberdeen Town Council to use the pathology service based at the Aberdeen City Hospital. As a result of the recommendations in the Survey, when the NHS was established Orkney became part of the North-Eastern Regional Hospital Board centred on Aberdeen. This set up a formal connection with the Aberdeen hospitals to provide a much fuller service for the islands, including regular visits by specialists from Aberdeen to Kirkwall, and access to specialist hospitals in and around Aberdeen for patients from Orkney.

*The side of the new Balfour Hospital with a glimpse of the children’s play area behind the hedging on the left. Photograph ©️ H. Blakeman*

The administrative structure established in 1948 remained in place until the mid-1970s NHS reforms which abolished the regional boards, replacing them with smaller health boards. The Orkney Health Board was the smallest of all with just two hospitals: the Balfour and Eastbank (Shetland Health Board administered three hospitals, while the Western Isles Health Board covered five hospitals.) When Eastbank Hospital closed in March 2000, the Health Board administered just the one hospital. In 2004 Orkney Health Board became NHS Orkney, but remains the smallest territorial health board in Scotland.

Notes – see also the Orkney page of the website

History of Parliament online: Orkney Herald, 21 March 1914, p.4 ↩︎
Historic Environment Scotland, List Description; R. H. Hossack, Kirkwall in the Orkneys, Kirkwall, 1900, pp 348-58. ↩︎
Orkney Herald, 19 June 1889, p.5; 25 Sept 1889, p.4; 6 Aug. 1890. ↩︎
Orkney Herald, 18 March 1914, p.4. ↩︎
see workhouses.org for more information on the former poorhouses on the Orkney islands ↩︎

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May News

Featured / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

The long spell of good weather lately has not been very conducive to research and writing indoors. I have made some progress, and have have begun revising the Suffolk page and did a bit of spring cleaning on the Aberdeenshire page. As always, any contributions of recent snaps, historic photos or drawings that could be added to the site would be very gratefully received.

*Foundation stone of new wing added to Letchworth Hospital in 1921, photographed in April 2025*, ©️ K. A. Morrison

May Queen Mystery

Lots of public buildings have foundations stones; these stones were usually laid by a local dignitary, marking the commencement of work. Usually they are inscribed with the name of the person laying the stone, the date, and often the names of the architect and builder. Recently I was sent photographs of Letchworth Hospital, including the one above ofthe foundation stone for the new wing built in 1921. It was the first time I had ever come across a foundation stone laid by the local May Queen. It also seemed unusual that the May Queen in question was not identified. I thought that I would easily find details in the local newspapers on the British Newspaper Archive, but have so far failed to turn up anything on the new wing or the May Queen. With a bit more digging, I found that the website Herts Memories lists all the May Queens from 1906 to 1966. The May Queen for 1920 was Edith Fox, later Mrs Stark, and I assume she was still in post in January 1921 when the foundation stone ceremony took place, before she was succeeded by Mary Cook (later Mrs Pound).

*The former Letchworth Hospital*, *photographed in April 2025 , ©️ K. A. Morrison*

Letchworth Hospital was established in a converted house at the beginning of the First world War. Plans had been drawn up before the war for a purpose-built hospital to designs by Barry Parker, of Barry Parker & Raymond Unwin based in Letchworth. Fundraising had been proceeding in 1913, but the amount raised fell far short of the £6,000 target by July 1914 when war was declared. War-time conditions made the need for a local hospital even greater, as beds in the London hospitals, where people from Letchworth had gone for surgery, were reserved for the military, and the nearest cottage hospital at Hitchin could not be relied on to have free beds for patients from Letchworth.

*The original Pixmore House in which Letchworth Hospital first opened in 1914, photographed in April 2025, ©️ K. A. Morrison*

A number of Letchworth homeowners came forward to offer up temporary accommodation. The hospital committee accepted an offer from Mr and Mrs Cockerell to take Pixmore House on lease for one year. At that time, many people believed that the war would not last long, so a year’s lease seemed adequate. Letchworth Temporary Hospital opened in October 1914. By March 1917, having extended the lease, the hospital’s board of management decided it should drop ‘Temporary’ from the hospital’s name. After the War a new fundraising scheme was launched to build a ‘peace memorial wing’. This was the extension for which the May Queen laid the foundation stone on 9 January 1921. Work was completed by November 1922. As well as not naming the May Queen, the stone did not record the names of the architect or builder, so as yet I am stumped. The plans may well have been provided by Barry Parker, who continued his association with the hospital into the 1930s. He was also the architect of Royston Hospital, about 12 miles north-east of Letchworth, built in 1920-4 to replace the earlier cottage hospital there.

*Royston Hospial photographed in August 2012 © Mick Malpass* *from Geograph*

Guy Dawber in Cockermouth

Over the last month or so I have been revising the Cumbria page. While doing some research to fill in gaps for one or two of the hospitals I was delighted to find that the cottage hospital at Cockermouth had been designed by one of the leading Arts & Crafts architects of the early twentieth century, Sir Guy Dawber. It was a relatively small commission.

*Former Cockermouth Cottage Hospital, photographed in 2007 ©️ Alexander P. Kapp, from Geograph*

Delight turned to dismay when I discovered that the building had been demolished relatively recently. It was damaged by the terrible floods that occurred in 2009, and a new hospital built further south. Part of the site has been redeveloped with retirement apartments (called Lancaster Court). The Guy Dawber hospital had been built in 1915, and by the late 1930s had 14 beds and two cots for children.

A Return to Margate

*Former Royal Sea-Bathing Hospital, Margate, photographed in May 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

A highlight for me this month was a trip to Margate on the Kent coast. Apart from the delights of Dreamland, the Walpole Hotel, the Margate Bookshop and many other attractions, it was an opportunity to catch up on developments at the former Sea Bathing Hospital site.

*The two-storey section of this wing added in the 1880s contained a sea-water swimming pool. Photograph May 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

The hospital closed in the 1990s when services transferred to Thanet District General. After a decade of standing empty planning permission was granted to convert the historic core into luxury apartments, and since then much of the former hospital has been adapted into housing.

*The large building centre right was built as a nurses’ home, built in 1922 and extended in 1935 when it was raised from two to four storeys. Photographed May 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

New apartment blocks have been built in sympathy with the 1880s additions to the hospital, and some high-end town houses built facing the sea. For more on the history of the site there’s a separate post here: Margate’s Sea Bathing Hospital

*West and East elevations of the hospital chapel, built at the south end of the 1880s wing. Photographed in May 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

*One of the new apartment blocks added to the west of the hospital. Photographed in May 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

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Airthrey Castle Maternity Hospital

Featured / Harriet Richardson / 48 Comments

Ten years ago, this was my very first post. I have revised it and added some photographs that I took in 2018 when I was staying on the University of Sterling Campus.

2123470466_7b90d32951_o — ‘Airthrey Castle against the Blue’ by Amy Palko photographed in 2007, and licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The hospital was opened at the beginning of the Second World War, occupying the mansion house designed by Robert Adam in his castle style. The estates of Airthrey Castle were built on to form Stirling University. Adam drew up designs for Airthrey Castle in 1791, but was not involved with its construction. Building work was supervised by Thomas Russell of Seton.

*Airthrey Castle on the 25-inch OS map revised in 1860 CC-BY (NLS)*

The entrance front was rebuilt in 1891 to designs by David Thomson for Donald Graham, the chief partner in the firm of William Graham & Company, East India Merchants, of Glasgow, who had purchased the estate in 1889. Graham died in January 1901 of erysipelas, the house remaining in possession of his wife. In 1924 the shipowner Charles Donaldson leases the estate. He died at the castle in December 1938.

canmore_image_DP00093950 — *Engraved view of Airthrey Castle before the late-nineteenth-century alterations, from Canmore*

At the outbreak of the Second World War the Estate was acquired by the Ministry of Health as an Emergency Maternity Hospital administered by Stirling County Council, taking patients evacuated from Stirling, Glasgow and Clydebank. In mid-September 1939 the Stirling Observer reported that the castle was being fitted out with 25 to 30 beds (in the 1950s and ’60s it had 30 beds). By the beginning of November 1939 there had already been 40 patients at Airthrey Castle. The Allan Water Hotel in Bridge of Allan had also been taken over as a hospital for expectant mothers at the start of the war, but this also took patients from Dumbartonshire. The evacuation scheme had been carried out in just two days following the outbreak of the war. By January 1940 the Allan Water Hotel had been returned to its owners, its use as a hospital having been discontinued. The hotel had initially been kept in reserve. The need for large numbers of beds for the evacuation of Glasgow hospitals that had been anticipated at the start of the war had not materialised. Airthrey Castle was proving sufficient.

*Garden front of Airthrey Castle, photographed in August 2018 ©️ H. Blakeman*

The castle remained in the ownership of the Graham family until after the war, having been put up for sale in November 1944. The advertisements for the sale noted that the Castle and ‘certain outbuildings’ with garden were temporarily occupied by the Local Authority as a War Emergency Maternity Hospital’.[Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 4 Nov . 1944, p.2.] The castle and estate were still being advertised fro sale in January 1945, when a large advertisement was place in Country Life. [Country Life, 12 Jan. 1945, p.8.] After the war, in November 1945, it was reported that there had been 2,050 births at Airthrey Castle since it opened. Sadly three mothers died during that time.[Falkirk Herald, 24 Nov. 1945, p.5.]

*View of the entrance front, photographed in August 2018 ©️ H. Blakeman*

In March 1946 Stirling County Council decided to purchase Airthrey Castle and and part of the estate in order that the much-needed maternity hospital should remain open.[Falkirk Herald, 30 March 1946, p.5.] The purchase had been completed by the end of October that year. With the foundation of the National Health Service in 1948, the hospital passed to the Western Regional Health Board. A nurses’ home was built in 1953 to the south-east of the house. This L-shaped, two-storey, flat-roofed building appears has survived and was in use as a surgery/health centre for the University in the 1980s.

*Winter garden or conservatory to the rear of the castle*, *photographed in August 2018 ©️ H. Blakeman*

In 1965 arrangements were made for the transfer to the new University of Stirling of the Airthrey Castle Estate, although it remained in use as a maternity hospital until 1968-9. The hospital was replaced by new maternity units in Paisley and Stirling. The castle was listed in 1973 category B.

*Airthrey Castle on the 25-inch OS map revised in 1914 showing the alterations to the house and the addition of the conservatory, CC-BY (NLS)*

*Airthrey Castle Maternity Hospital on the large-scale OS map revised in 1959 showing the addition of the nurses’ wing to the east and a tennis court in the grounds. CC-BY (NLS)*

*Nurses’ accommodation added to the castle, with the side of the conservatory to the left,* *photographed in August 2018 ©️ H. Blakeman*

*Two views of the rear of the castle showing the nurses’ accommodation wing, photographed in August 2018 ©️ H. Blakeman*

*Airthrey Castle*, *photographed in August 2018 ©️ H. Blakeman*

Sources unless otherwise given in the text above: Edinburgh Evening News, 23 Jan 1901: Dundee Courier, 1 Jan 1924: Western Daily Press, 8 Dec 1938: Stirling Observer, 14 Sept. 1939 p.3: The Scotsman, 3 Nov 1939, p.5: Dundee Courier, 15 Jan 1940: Dundee Evening Telegraph, 21 Feb 1944: PP ‘Report of the Department of Health for Scotland…’ 1953 c.9107: PP ‘Scottish Home and Health Department Review of the Hospital Plan for Scotland’ 1966 c.2877: OS maps.

Further Reading: N. Reid, ‘Airthrey Castle Maternity Hospital 1939-1948’, and E. Rose ‘Airthrey Castle Maternity Hospital 1948-1969’ in Report of Proceedings of the Society of the Scottish History of Medicine, 1988-9, pp.14-17

When is a hospital not a hospital?

April 21, 2025April 22, 2025 / Harriet Richardson / 3 Comments

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a hospital was more likely to be an almshouse or school than a hospital in the modern, medical sense. Christ’s Hospital, for example was one of the five royal hospitals founded in the sixteenth century to house and educate the poor children in the City of London. In Scotland, Heriot’s Hospital in Edinburgh was founded as a school in the seventeenth century. This short post looks at another example – Hutcheson’s Hospital in Glasgow.

*Hutcheson’s Hall, Glasgow ©️ <P&P> photo* *from Flickr*

Recently I was sent an enquiry about the listing of someone’s address in 1921 as 133 Hospital Street, Glasgow. They wanted to know what that meant. At first I thought it was rather a daft question, Hospital Street is just the address where the person lived. I think perhaps they actually meant why was it called Hospital Street. There are quite a few Hospital Streets and Hospital Roads in Britain, as well as Workhouse and Union Roads – named very simply because they led to a hospital or workhouse. The name ‘Spittal’ Street also suggests that there was once a hospital in the locality, probably of monastic origins.

*Hospital Street, Gorbals Ward, on the large-scale OS map surveyed in 1952 CC-BY (NLS)*

Hospital Street in Glasgow no longer exists. It was in the Gorbals, and I was not aware that there had never been a hospital in the vicinity, so why was it called Hospital Street? The reason will be obvious to anyone who knows Glasgow well, but for those who, like me, are not so familiar with the city and its history, I thought it was worth explaining. Thanks to the National Library of Scotland’s online maps collection, it was an easy enough question to answer. They have digitised many Town Plans, including Flemings map of Glasgow of 1807. This showed that the area here belonged to Hutcheson’s Hospital.

*Fleming’s map of Glasgow, 1807, showing an area shaded pink marked as ‘The property of Hutcheson’s Hospital’. CC-BY (NLS)*

Hutcheson’s Hospital was not a hospital in the modern sense, but an almshouse and school, named after its founders Thomas and George Hutcheson, and established in 1641 in the Trongate. It moved to new premises in 1805. This handsome building in Ingram Street was designed by David Hamilton, and is now called Hutcheson’s Hall. Initially this housed both the elderly men and the school pupils, but as the school grew, a larger building was needed. A new, separate school was built in Crown Street, south of the Clyde in the Gorbals area, in 1841 designed by Robert Craig. The Hospital owned a large tract of land there, as marked on Fleming’s map. They may well have owned more, and had partly funded the construction of the bridge over the Clyde there.

*Hospital Street is on the left in this extract from the OS Town Plan surveyed in 1856-8, towards the bottom in the centre is Hutcheson’s Hospital School. CC-BY (NLS)*

When the school moved here the area was just beginning to be developed southwards, providing the workforce for the industries nearer the river. The map shows the many factories, cotton mills, and ironworks located along the grandly named Adelphi Terrace to the east of Hutcheson (later Hutchesontown) Bridge. The bridge shown on the map below was the new stone bridge built in 1829-34 replacing earlier wooden bridges.

*Gorbals area on the OS Town Plan of 1857 CC-BY (NLS)*

Hospital Street had been built up with tenements by the 1850s, along with three substantial churches. This being an area dominated by industry and business premises, it was mapped by the Goad Fire Insurance Company. Only the west side of the road was covered, where it backed on to the railway lines. The extract from the map below shows the stables, garages and small businesses that occupied the railway arches in the mid-1930s.

*Goad Fire Insurance plan, 1935, CC-BY (NLS)*

Hospital Street was within the Gorbals Comprehensive Development Area. The area of Hutchesontown was rebuilt with high-rise tower blocks designed by Robert Matthew and Basil Spence alongside low-rise development, the first to be built and completed in the late 1950s. In the 1960s the development was highly acclaimed for its brutalist architecture, but a combination of factors meant that by the 1980s the towers were in a poor condition. The Hutchesontown tower blocks were demolished in the early 1990s.

*A broader section of the Goad Fire Insurance map of 1935 showing the south side of the River Clyde, with Hospital Street on the right of the image, CC-BY (NLS)*

Sources: National Library for Scotland online maps collection; Canmore; University of Glasgow, Hutchesontown development; Hutcheson’s Grammar School ‘our history’.

April News

April 18, 2025 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

The weather here in Scotland has been so lovely in late March and early April that I have been outside as much as possible. However, I have also had time to do a little work on Historic Hospitals and have had some interesting enquiries. So here is a summary of this month’s progress.

The mysterious case of a TB patient at Arlesey Hospital, Bedfordshire

A lady contacted me about the whereabouts of the Arlesey hospital to which her father had been admitted as a TB patient in the late 40s or early 50s. Having looked up Arlesey on the Historic Hospitals website the only reference she found was to Fairfield Hospital at Arlesley, the large psychiatric hospital that was founded as the Three Counties Asylum. She was understandably confused – as was I.

*The former Three Counties Asylum, later Fairfield Hospital, Arlesey, photographed in December 2018 ©️ H. Blakeman*

There was a severe shortage of beds for TB cases after the Second World War, so I wondered if some accommodation had been taken over at Fairfield Hospital for that purpose. A bit of research revealed that during the Second World War the London Chest Hospital established a country branch at Arlesey in the hutted annexe built in the grounds of Fairfield Hospital. This made perfect sense, as the patient was from London.

*City of London Chest Hospital*, *photographed in 1992 ©️ H. Blakeman*

The Chest Hospital was severely damaged during bombing in 1941 hence the need to evacuate to the country. During his stay as a patient, the lady’s father, David Tatch, composed the following poem:

With Apologies to Rudyard Kipling
If you can take your strep and P.A.S. and multicoloured pills,
And swallow them, and still can smile, in spite of all your ills,
If you can sit precariously upon a bedpan chill,
With screens agape, and then can wait, while Ingrid has her fill.
If you can take a gastric tube, and still with sickly grin,
Say "Nursie dear, I didn't feel the blessed thing go in".
If you can stand "Bomb Happy" and say she's sweet and kind,
And listen to the row each night, and still retain your mind,
If you enjoy the country air, and don't mind losing weight,
If you can eat with relish the "bangers" on your plate,
And dine on stew, that's far from new, oblivious of the smell,
Then come to Arlesey, my son, PERHAPS you will get well.
a poem by David Tatch

One of the hutted ward blocks built on the Fairfield Hospital site at the beginning of the Second World War, *photographed in the 1990s © Louis Holmsted*

Developments in Devon

I also had an enquiry about the Bideford Isolation Hospital (North Devon) from someone who had been a patient there in 1954 with suspected polio. He recalled that he stayed there for most of the school summer holiday, and for about half that time was the only patient in the entire hospital. He also remembered that the hospital comprised ‘three bungalow style wards – each with about 6-10 rooms’. He got on well with one of the sisters, who informed him that not many summers prior to his stay, the place would be overflowing into the corridors with diphtheria cases, but vaccinations had put a stop to that. He also remembered the name of one of the doctors as either a Dr Hewitt or Hewitson.

*Kingsley Hospital, Bideford, on the large-scale OS map revised in 1957 CC-BY (NLS)*

Unfortunately, the Devon page on this site is another one that has very little on it. A little bit of investigating revealed that the North Devon Joint Isolation Hospital at Bideford was renamed the Kinglsey Hospital in 1955. This was probably in response to changing use with the decline in the need for isolation hospitals once vaccines dramatically reduced the incidence of measles, scarlet fever and diphtheria. I was delighted to find that the buildings are still extant, though now named Kinglsey House, a residential centre for people with autism run by the National Autistic Society. I have not yet tracked down any photographs of the buildings, which mostly seem to date from the 1920s and ’30s, of one and two storeys, in white-painted render with slate roofs. I would be very grateful if anyone had any that I could post on the website.

*Dean Clarke House, the former Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, photographed in 2017 ©* *Derek Harper from Geograph*

Devon is particularly rich in historic hospitals. Exeter has the earliest purpose-built voluntary hospital in England outside London. It is no longer a hospital, but the building is still extant having been converted to offices, named Dean Clarke House. Devon also nearly had a cottage hospital designed by the Modernist architectural husband and wife team of Jane Drew and J. T. Alliston. They won a competition to design a replacement for the Dawlish Cottage Hospital held in 1937, but the outbreak of the Second World War led to the scheme being laid aside.

*Dawlish Cottage Hospital elevation and plan, from* The Builder, *28 May 1937, p.1136 (from the Internet Archive)*

James Thomas Alliston and Jane Drew were married in 1933 and their architectural partnership lasted from 1934 until 1939, when the couple’s marriage was dissolved. Drew subsequently married Maxwell Fry. Their architectural partnership is perhaps best known today for its work in West Africa and India, which included housing and public buildings, including hospitals.

James T. Alliston and Jane Drew, *from* The Builder, *28 May 1937 (from the Internet Archive)*

A Start to Revising Cumbria

Apart from dabbling in Devon and Bedfordshire, I have also started to tackle the hospitals in Cumbria. Earlier this month I began to add in some historic maps, photographs and potted histories. This work is very much in its early stages, but the highlight so far has been Brampton War Memorial Hospital. It is a particularly good example of the handsome cottage hospitals built after the First World War. It was designed by the Carlisle architect and photographer, Samuel W. B. Jack, and built in 1922-3.

*Brampton War Memorial Hospital photographed in 2018 ©️ Rose and Trev Clough from Geograph*

Ten Years Ago This Month

Finally, as it is ten years since I first launched the Historic Hospitals site, I thought I would look back at some of the earliest posts that I wrote. The very first one was on Airthrey Castle Maternity Hospital. Since then I have visited the site, which is now on the University of Stirling campus, so I have updated the post and added some maps and photos. Lots of people who were born there have commented on the post, though only a very small fraction of the 2,050 babies born there between 1941 and 1945, and no doubt many more thousands from 1945 up to about 1969 when it finally closed.

Garden front of Airthrey Castle, Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire, that was a maternity hospital from 1941 to 1969. Now part of the University of Stirling campus. Photographed in *August 2018 ©️ H. Blakeman*

March News

March 21, 2025April 12, 2025 / Harriet Richardson / 1 Comment

Although I write a new post infrequently, most weeks I revise one or other of the pages on the historic-hospitals site. I thought perhaps it would be useful to share what I have been doing, and draw attention to new information.

Strathmore Hospital, Blairgowrie

At the beginning of this month I was delighted to receive this aerial photograph of Strathmore Hospital, Blairgowrie, Perthshire. It was taken from a light aircraft by the husband of one of the members of staff. Parts of the hospital are still standing – the larger square building at the centre of the photograph and the small, single-storey building to the top left. They have been converted into private houses, and other houses have been built on the site in place of the two large ward wings in the foreground of the picture. The hospital first opened in June 1904. It was for infectious diseases and built to serve the burghs in Eastern Perthshire of Couper Angus, Alyth, Blairgowrie and Rattray. The architect was Lake Falconer, who had earlier designed the cottage hospital in Blairgowrie, still functioning as an NHS community hospital. Strathmore Hospital was latterly a geriatric unit before it closed in 1987.

*Blairgowrie Cottage Hospital photographed in August 2022 ©️ H. Blakeman*

Northern Ireland

Over the last couple of months I have been reading about the hospitals in Northern Ireland in preparation for a short talk for Belfast Health and Social and Care Trust. I have started to revise and update the Northern Ireland page, but there is still a long way to go. As might be expected, there are some significant differences between the way in which hospital provision developed in Ireland from the rest of Britain, though fewer differences in architectural design. Uniquely in Ireland an Act of Parliament of 1765 aimed to encourage the establishment of hospitals for the ‘sick and diseased poor’ in the more remote rural areas. There was no comparable legislation in England, Scotland or Wales. By 1771, 26 county infirmaries had been built. The County Infirmary at Armagh is a surviving example. It closed in the 1990s but was adapted to new uses including the Armagh Irish and Local Studies Library.

*Former Armagh City Hospital, Abbey Street, photographed in 2016, © Eric Jones from Geograph*

Staffordshire

Recently I have been revising the Staffordshire page. Of the 42 hospitals listed there, the majority were still standing in the early 1990s. Six were either in the course of construction or have been built since then. There is still a lot to be added to the Staffordshire page, but at least it is a bit more up to date on the current status of the county’s historic hospitals.

Former Burton General Hospital, photographed in 1993, demolished the following year, © *H. Blakeman*

The uncertain future of historic hospitals was one of the main reasons for the survey of pre-1948 hospitals undertaken by the Royal Commission on the Historic Monuments of England in the early 1990s. When the NHS was founded in 1948 one of its main aims was to replace pre-war buildings with a network of district general hospitals that would centralise and rationalise services. The huge cost of that undertaking has meant that this has been a much slower process than had been anticipated and it was only by the 1980s that large numbers of old hospitals were becoming surplus to requirements. At the same time the ‘care in the community’ policy in the mental health sector meant that the majority of large mental hospitals were closing and up for disposal.

Part of the former St Matthew’s Hospital, much of this large hospital complex was demolished as part of its redevelopment for housing. Photograph in 1993 © *H. Blakeman*

The rebuilding policy of the NHS has had a major impact on our hospital heritage, with a high percentage of demolition despite the historic significance of these sites. In Staffordshire alone, thirty hospitals have been demolished, either completely or partly, ranging in size from cottage hospitals to large general hospitals. These include Hartshill Orthopaedic Hospital, Rugely Cottage Hospital, and large sections of St Edwards and St Matthew’s Hospitals, as well as most of the North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary.

*Architect’s perspective of the proposed new hospital at Hartshill, Stoke on Trent, from* The Builder, 30 June 1866, p.487 (Internet Archive)

The North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary in Stoke on Trent was an early example of a pavilion-plan hospital, built in 1866-9. The only part of the original hospital to have been retained is the western entrance block, the ward pavilions and all the rest of the complex that appear on the architectural perspective above have gone.

*West entrance block of the original North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary, photographed in 2012 ©* *Alf Beard from Geograph*

The Royal Infirmary grew considerably, particularly in the early twentieth century. As its services and the number of beds increased, the need to accommodate more nursing staff grew. The original nurses’ home to the west of the main complex was supplemented by a new home on the east side built in 1902 to commemorate the coronation of King Edward VII. This second home was extended in 1913 and again in 1925-7. A final extension was built during the Second World War, in 1940-2, to cope with the continuing expansion of the hospital. The 1940s wing was designed by Wood, Goldstraw and Yorath, and provided single bedrooms for 16 sisters and 83 nurses. Its most distinctive feature was a two-storey, flat-roofed projecting wing ending in semi-circular balconies that housed recreation rooms.

*The early 1940s nurses’ home extension at the North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary, Stoke on Trent, photographed in 1993. It had already been demolished before the hospital closed.*

To the south of the old Royal Infirmary, was Stoke’s workhouse which developed into the City General Hospital. More recently the site has seen the development of the Royal Stoke University Hospital. The original workhouse was constructed in 1832 with accommodation for 270 inmates. A hospital was added in 1842, and a school and chapel in 1866. These ranges survive more-or-less intact (there has been some demolition to the rear of the original workhouse and the school).

*Front range of the original workhouse complex at Royal Stoke University Hospital, photographed in May 1993*

Further hospital blocks were built in the 1870s, ’80s and ’90s in the south-west quadrant of the site. The 1870s hospital wing has gone, but part of the hospital range to its west is still extant. The twentieth-century additions to the site seem to have entirely gone, including the nurses’ home, a moderne-style hospital wing to the north of the original workhouse, and a sanatorium just east of the school all dating to the 1920s and ’30s. (The sanatorium had already been demolished by the 1990s.) Gone too is the North Staffordshire Maternity Hospital built in the late 1960s to the east of the school and sanatorium.

Inter-war ward wing that formerly stood on the *Royal Stoke University Hospital site, photographed in May 1993*

Sadly the scope of the Royal Commission’s hospitals survey did not extend to post-war hospital blocks, so it can be hard to find any photographic record of buildings from the 1940s-80s that have already been demolished. The sheer number of hospitals made a more comprehensive survey too ambitious for the team. As it was, we could not visit every site in the country. I still have the notebook in which the London team jotted down our site visits, useful now to know when we took our quick snaps that helped us write up our reports. Sometimes the weather prevented us from doing much. We were rained off on our visit to St George’s in Stafford, and there’s a note by Staffordshire General that says ‘drove past in a thunderstorm’.

Insch & District War Memorial Hospital

November 9, 2024November 9, 2024 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

*Insch & District Cottage Hospital, photograph from the hospital’s Annual Report of 1922 reproduced courtesy of NHS Grampian Archive*

As Remembrance Sunday approaches, I wanted to reflect on the work of the Red Cross in the First World War, on the auxiliary hospitals for war wounded that were set up in private houses, and on the founding of the cottage hospital at Insch, in Aberdeenshire, as one of the many hospitals built as a ‘lasting memorial to those who fell in the war’.

*‘We love Insch Hospital’ sign at the hospital. I noticed quite a few of these in the local area. Photographed in September 2024 ©* *H. Blakeman*

Sadly, today the Insch and District War Memorial Hospital stands empty, its future uncertain – despite strong support locally and an active Friends group.

*West wing of the hospital, south front – the memorial panel can just be seen on the right, which is to the left of the original main entrance ©* *H. Blakeman*

The cottage hospital at Insch is one of four war memorial hospitals that I know of in Scotland. There is one other in Aberdeenshire, the Kincardine O’Neil Hospital at Torphins, which opened in 1925, and there was one established at Peebles and a fourth at Lamlash on the Isle of Arran. If you search the Imperial War Museum’s register 148 records appear for hospitals, though some are memorials within older hospitals. At Leith Hospital, Edinburgh, for example, a children’s ward was added as a memorial.

*East wing of the hospital, south front. The end of the wing, beyond the chimney stack, was added in 1933-4. ©* *H. Blakeman*

Funds to build a hospital at Insch were bequeathed by William Smith, advocate, of Aberdeen, after his death in 1917.[1] In February 1919 the question of memorialising the war was discussed by local parish councils. In the parish of Premnay, the erection of a cottage hospital at Insch was considered the most suitable memorial and a committee was appointed to make arrangements.

*OS quarter-inch map of administrative areas published in 1940 CC-BY (NLS)*

Hospitals must have seemed a particularly fitting memorial, having been one of the most tangible ways in which those at home encountered war, through the many war hospitals established in Britain. Large numbers of existing hospitals were either given over entirely or in part to treat war casualties, and these were supported by auxiliary hospitals run by a coalition of the Red Cross and the Order of St John. Most of these were in private houses and adapted halls and hotels.

*Postcard of Drumrossie House, n.d.* c.1910

There were two auxiliary hospitals in or near Insch, at Drumrossie House and Leith Hall. Drumrossie House had been a Red Cross auxiliary hospital with 20 beds.[2] It served as a VAD hospital from 1914 until half-way through 1919. The patients supported the proposed war memorial hospital, helping to raise funds, one of their fund-raising events took place in March 1919 when some of the wounded and convalescent soldiers put on a concert in the Public Hall. [3]

*Leith Hall, Kennethmont, Aberdeenshire, photographed in September 2024 ©* *H. Blakeman*

Leith Hall, at Kennethmont to the west of Insch, was opened for casualties and convalescent patients from October 1914 until May 1919. Henrietta Leith Hay received a medal after the war for her work in the hospital. (She presented Leith Hall to the National Trust after the Second World War, both her husband and her son had died in 1939.) The site for the hospital at Insch was granted to the hospital managers by her husband, Charles Edward Norman Leith Hay.

*Details of the portraits of Henrietta Leith Hay and her husband that hang at Leith Hall.*

Leith Hall and Drumrossie House were two of the eleven Red Cross auxiliary hospitals in Aberdeenshire, and of the 44 in the North East of Scotland. (For a list of the hospitals see the post on First World War Auxiliary Hospitals.) The local newspapers regularly published notes of thanks for gifts to these hospitals and of entertainments put on for the patients. Amongst the lists of people thanked for gifts to the patients at Leith Hall was a Mrs Helen Scatterty of Earlsfield, Insch, who donated three-and-a-half dozen eggs in June 1917. She may have been related to the first matron of Insch Hospital, Isabella Scatterty (b.1886). Isabella grew up on her father’s farm, Mains of Boddam, and trained at Stobhill Hospital, Glasgow and then the Royal Maternity and Women’s Hospital, also in Glasgow. Latterly she had been a sister at Bangour War Hospital in Edinburgh.

*General view of the north front of Insch Hospital, photographed in September 2024, ©* *H. Blakeman*

Plans for the Insch Memorial hospital were drawn up in 1920 by the Aberdeen architect, George Bennett Mitchell (1865-1941). Mitchell had been an assistant in the firm of Jenkins & Marr, and from 1887 was architect to the surveyors’ department of Davidson & Garden, advocates of Aberdeen. In the 1920s his son, George Angus Mitchell, was working with him, becoming a partner in 1929. [4] Confusingly the local doctor in Insch was another George Mitchell, he advised on the planning and became the hospital’s chief medical officer. The plans for the hospital were also vetted by the Scottish Board of Health. This was a condition of a grant from the Board in recognition of Insch hospital providing maternity beds under the County Council’s Maternity Services and Child Welfare schemes.[5]

*Insch Hospital, rear view of extension on the east side, viewed from the north. © H. Blakeman*

The contractors for the building were as follows: mason, John Smith, of Kintore; carpentry, John Fraser, Insch; slater, George Glennie, Insch; plaster and cement work, George Robertson, Inverurie; painter, Alexander Duffus, Aberdeen and Insch; plumber, James Laing and Sons, Inverurie; electric lighting, John Souter, Insch; out-house buildings, John Morrison, carpenter and ironmonger, Insch.[6]

*Out-house or service block on north side of Insch Hospital, backing on to Rannes Street © H. Blakeman*

Many worked hard to ensure establishment and success of the hospital, including Colonel George Milne of Logie (1857-1939), who was the president of the Executive Committee of the hospital and chairman of the management committee. Milne and his wife, Florence (née Barclay) had been active in raising funds for hospitals during the war and Florence had served as County Director of the Aberdeen Red Cross. [7]. Charles W. Beattie (1872-1955), the committee secretary, was also an active supporter of the hospital, he later served as Provost of Insch and was honorary president of Insch Golf Club in 1928. In February 1939 he and the matron, Isabella Scatterty, were married – they were both in their 50s by then.[8]

*Memorial panels at Insch Hospital. These are on the outside of the building, on either side of the original main entrance © H. Blakeman*

The hospital was officially opened on 24 August 1922 by Sir Napier Burnett, a native of Fraserburgh who had become a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist. He had risen to prominence during the First World War in the administration of the emergency hospital services. In March 1920 he had been appointed director of hospital services to the Joint Council of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John. ‘In this capacity he visited probably most of the hospitals in Great Britain’ (quite a feat, even in peace time.)[9] On either side of the central entrance door are the granite tablets bearing the names of residents from Insch and Premnay parishes who had lost their lives in the war.

*Insch Hospital east wing. This wing was extended in the early 1930s, the main entrance was enclosed and a new day room added in the 1972 © H. Blakeman*

Within the entrance hall, facing the door, was an oak tablet with the names of 139 people who had died from the six parishes that contributed to the founding of the hospital. The tablet was gifted by Major Cleghorn of Drumrossie, and beneath a red cross was an inscription that read: : “Insch and District War Memorial Hospital. To the glory of God, in everlasting gratitude to all of this district who served in the Great War 1914-1918, and to the hallowed memory of those who died, this Hospital is erected”

*The newly extended hospital photographed in 1933 from the Annual Report, reproduced courtesy of NHS Grampian Archives*

Originally the hospital had just 12 beds, including three for maternity cases. The rest of the beds were allocated evenly for men and women in two three-bedded wards and two single rooms. There was an operating theatre, a sitting-room and bedroom for the matron, a bedroom for a nurse and for a maid, a kitchen, scullery and washroom. Lighting was by electricity, and the grounds were planted with trees and shrubs, and with flowers at the central entrance. [10] The plan is quite unusual for a cottage hospital, and particularly interesting because of the involvement of the Board of Health in vetting its design. It is unusual to have so many doors, presumably providing direct access to the small wards. (The original plans are in Aberdeen City Archives, but at the moment the archives are closed to the public while they move to a new home.) The doors have since been blocked, their upper parts turned into windows, but the hospital preserves a good sense of its former appearance, with original elements surviving such as the ventilation flues on the roof ridge and the timber brackets supporting the eaves.

*Looking west along the south front of the hospital © H. Blakeman*

By 1930 the hospital managers were discussing the need to increase the number of beds available, as the number of patients admitted each year was steadily rising. It was decided to add another wing to serve as a nurses’ home and allow the former staff accommodation to be reconfigured. [11] The matron’s and nurses’ bedrooms were turned into a new maternity ward with two beds and a private ward. The new wing added to the east of the main south block provided a nurses’ sitting room, seven bedrooms, linen-room, and lavatory. It continued the line of the existing hospital, and was designed to match the earlier building in style.[12]

*The day-room added on the south side of the hospital* *in 1972 and extended in 1993 © H. Blakeman*

Since 1948 the hospital has been part of the National Health Service. Additions from the 1970s include a day-room extending from the main entrance. It is perhaps more of a useful addition than a visual enhancement to the south front of the building. More attractive is the health centre of 1979, which is in scale with the original buildings. The jaunty mono-pitch roof on the north entrance range gives it character, and the shrubs and surrounding gardens soften its grey-rendered walls.

*Insch Hospital, Health Centre added in 1979, from the north ©* *H. Blakeman*

The hospital closed to patients in 2020, just two years shy of its centenary. I hope that it will survive – preferably in medical use.

*Insch Hospital, health centre added in the 1970s at the west end of the hospital. H. Blakeman*

References:

Aberdeen Evening Express, 4 Dec.1917, p.2
Aberdeen Daily Journal, 21 Dec. 1914, p.8
Aberdeen Press & Journal, 1 Jan 1919, p.1; Huntly Express, 7 March 1919, p.3
Dictionary of Scottish Architects. Aberdeen City Archives GBM/1920/7/1-10
Aberdeen Daily Journal, 23 Nov. 1920
Aberdeen Press & Journal, 24 Dec. 1920
Ibid.
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 7 Feb. 1939, p.5.
obituary of Sir Edward Napier Burnett, BMJ, 5 Jan. 1924, p.42.
Aberdeen Press & Journal, 25 Aug. 1922
Aberdeen P&J, 31 March 1930, 23 March 1932, Builder, 31 March 1933, p.559:
NHS Grampian Archives, GRHB 29/3/1 Insch and District War Memorial Hospital, Annual Reports

Herefordshire’s Historic Hospitals

October 19, 2024October 21, 2024 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

Over the last year I have been revising the pages on this website that cover the hospitals in England. I am aware that some of the county pages have little more than a list of sites. Herefordshire was one that had very little information about any of the buildings, but it has now been revised with maps, brief histories and illustrations. This post gives a quick summary of the historic hospitals of Herefordshire and the present status of those buildings.

*Hereford General Hospital from the Annual Report for 1927, from the Wellcome Collection*

Hereford General was the first hospital in the modern sense to be established in the county. It was founded in 1776 and occupied adapted premises in Eign Street. Its success warranted a permanent structure for which a site was given by Lord Oxford (Edward Harley, the third Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, who was MP for Leominster and Droitwich). Building work began in 1781 to designs attributed to William Parker and was completed in 1783.

*Former Herefordshire General Hospital, photographed in 2013 © Stephen Richards from* ***Geograph***

The original building survives at the heart of the site, comprising the central nine bays with advanced pedimented centre. It has been much extended and altered, upwards and outwards, including the entrance porch that was added in 1887 at the same time as the Victoria Wing. By the middle of the twentieth century the site was heavily built over, apart from the open ground immediately in front of the original range overlooking the River Wye. A good sense of way in which the hospital evolved can be gained from a short film made in 2002, as the hospital faced closure, which gives the viewer a guided tour both outside and in (see Hereford Focus on YouTube).

*Victoria Ward, Hereford General Hospital, from the Annual Report for 1928, from the Wellcome Collection*

Hereford General remained the main acute hospital for the county throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. The main alternative was Hereford Union Workhouse, which would have had some accommodation for sick paupers from when it was first built in 1836-7. New infirmary wings were built on the site in 1876 and in the early 1900s, but the main transformation came after the Local Government Act of 1929 which saw many former workhouses transformed into municipal hospitals. For Hereford this resulted in its development into the present Hereford County Hospital, initially with a new hospital range begun just before the Second World War. Shortly after the war broke a series of hutted ward blocks were built on the site as part of the Emergency Medical Scheme to provide for the anticipated large numbers of casualties.

*Hereford County Hospital. Part of the former workhouse buildings remaining on the site, photographed in 2008 *© Jonathan Billinger* from Geograph*

Hereford also had a number of specialist hospitals. The Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital opened in 1889, a handsome Tudor style building designed by the local architect E. H. Lingen Barker. Hereford Town Council also provided for infectious diseases with hospitals at Tupsley while the wider county was served by a sanatorium for tuberculosis near Ameley in a converted house (Nieuport Sanatorium). Provision for maternity cases was increasing in the 1940s, as hospital births began to be more common than home births. The County Hospital had a maternity department that was being extended at the end of the war, and there was a small public maternity ward at the General as well as a few private beds. There were also a few maternity beds at all but Ledbury of the former workhouses, while for private paying patients there was a maternity home in Hereford with four beds.

*Former Victoria Eye Hospital, now converted to housing. Photographed in the* *early 1990s © L. Holmstadt*

There was also the county mental hospital, St Mary’s, at Burghill, first opened in 1871 and a ‘mentally deficiency’ institution at Holme Lacy House that opened in the 1930s. In the rest of the county there were a few workhouses, cottage hospitals and small rural isolation hospitals that were established in the nineteenth century.

*Holme Lacy House, photographed in 2005, © David Dixon*, *from Geograph*

Most of the pre-war hospitals in the Herefordshire are no longer in the NHS estate. Some have been demolished, others adapted to new uses. When the NHS came into being in 1948 the hospitals in Herefordshire came under the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board, which also covered Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire. This administrative structure remained in place until the NHS reorganisation of 1974.

*Postcard of the former St Mary’s Hospital, probably from around 1900-10*, *when it was still known as ‘the asylum’.*

Initially the Regional Board was responsible for around 220 hospitals with a total of about 42,000 beds. These were grouped into management units based on function and geographical location. Herefordshire Hospital Management Committee oversaw eighteen hospitals. These were: the General and County Hospitals and the Victoria Eye Hospital in Hereford; St Mary’s Mental Hospital, Tupsley Hospital for infectious diseases and Tupsley Smallpox Hospital; Holme Lacy Hospital for ‘mental defectives’; the cottage hospitals at Ledbury, Leominster, Ross-on-Wye, and Kington; Stretton Sugwas Hospital, near Credenhill; Nieuport Sanatorium; the former workhouses at Ross-on-Wye (Dean Hill Hospital), Bromyard, Leominster (Old Priory Hospital),and Kington (Kingswood Hall). Leominster and Kington were owned by Hereford County Council but the NHS had rights to accommodation under the 1948 National Assistance Act. Nieuport Sanatorium closed in 1951 and the Tupsley smallpox hospital was used as a store. Another smallpox hospital near Bromyard was transferred to the NHS but not used, it was sold in 1952.

*Nieuport House was used as a TB sanatorium by Herefordshire County Council in the 1930s. Photographed in 2007 © Philip Halling, from Geograph*

There are now four NHS hospitals in Herefordshire: Herefordshire County Hospital (the main complex built in 1999-2001, W. S. Atkins Healthcare, with other blocks from 1950s-80s and fragments of the 1830s workhouse), and three community hospitals at Leominster (1899, partly rebuilt 1991), Ross-on-Wye (1995-7 incorporating part of the former workhouse) and Bromyard (1989, Abbey Hanson Rowe Partnership). Mental Health services also operate two in-patient units in Hereford: the Stonebow Unit is on the County Hospital site and is a purpose-built facility erected in 1985 that was recently upgraded, and Oak House in Barton Road, a residential rehabilitation unit in a converted house.

*Stonebow Unit photographed in 2008, © Jonathan Billinger, from Geograph*

Herefordshire in 1945 was still an essentially rural county with no large centres of population. The advent of the NHS was seen as an opportunity to rationalise services, including centralisation, continuing a process that had begun before the war. In order to inform the strategic planning of the hospital service, the Board drew on the Hospital Survey of the West Midlands Area published in 1945 by the Ministry of Health. The Survey did not cover the mental health service which was considered as an essentially separate service with its own legislative basis and at the time there were uncertainties about how it might be integrated within a broader national health service, or even if it should be included at all.

*Former Ledbury Cottage Hospital, converted to apartments in 2009. Photographed in 2016 © John M. from Geograph*

The future of cottage hospitals was particularly threatened by the wider policy for modernisation, centralisation and rationalisation. The Hospital Survey of 1945 noted that Ross-on-Wye cottage hospital had 16 beds, plus ‘a few beds in huts in the garden’, Leominster had 13 beds, Ledbury 12 and Kington just 10 beds. There had also been a cottage hospital at Bromyard, but financial difficulties had led to its closure during the First World War. The others lasted longer. Ross-on-Wye Cottage Hospital was replaced by the new community hospital built on the site of the old workhouse. It was demolished after closure in 1997 and replaced by retirement flats. The original Leominster Cottage Hospital partly survives, absorbed by the present community hospital. Its ward block was demolished to make way for the new hospital building which opened in 1991. Ledbury Cottage Hospital was converted to mixed residential and business use in 2009, having closed in 2002. The Victoria Cottage Hospital at Kington is now Kington Youth Hostel.

*Former Bromyard Hospital, now Enderby House, photographed in 2021* © J. Thomas, from **Geograph**

The Hospital Survey also noted that five former workhouses in Herefordshire had chronic sick wards: Leominster, Ross, Kington, Ledbury and Bromyard. Leominster workhouse, like Kington Cottage Hospital, has become a youth hostel (the workhouse had incorporated some fifteenth-century priory buildings). Ross-on-Wye union workhouse developed into Dean Hill Hospital for geriatrics and mental health unit, and had 157 beds by the mid-1960s. The workhouse buildings have partly been demolished to make way for the present community hospital. Kington and Ledbury Workhouses were not transferred to the NHS. Kington has been demolished and Ledbury partly demolished, but some of the workhouse ranges were converted into housing. Bromyard Workhouse has also been turned into flats, not with great sensitivity.

*The former Medical Superintendent’s House of St Mary’s Hospital, photographed in 2011 © Philip Pankhurst from Geograph*

The largest hospital in the county was St Mary’s, built as the City and County Asylum. It closed in 1994 and in 1998 most of the hospital buildings were ‘stupidly demolished’ (according to the Pevsner Architectural Guide) to make way for a large housing development. The entrance building (St Mary’s House) remains along with sections of the ward wings which were converted to flats.

More information on Herefordshire’s hospitals can be found on the Herefordshire page. There is also more on the workhouses on the workhouses.org site. Archival records relating to the hospitals are mostly at Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre, and I would also recommend the Herefordshire Through Time website, which has a section on hospitals. Historic England Archive has the hospital reports and building files that were put together for the national survey of hospitals carried out in the early 1990s on which I worked (though not on Herefordshire). The files may contain photographs of buildings that were standing then but have since been demolished.

Bridge of Alford Hospital

October 12, 2024 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

*Former Alford Hospital photographed in September 2024 *© H.* Blakeman*

The former Alford Hospital is one of many small isolation hospitals built across the United Kingdom in accordance with Public Health Legislation. The Public Health (Scotland) Act of 1897 made providing hospitals for infectious diseases a requirement of local authorities. The Local Government Board could authorise loans for construction and vetted plans.

*Extract from the OS map surveyed in 1899 CC-BY (NLS)*

Alford hospital was built in 1897-8 to designs by James Duncan & Son, architects of Turriff. Funds had been raised for a cottage hospital in Alford in the later 1870s but seemingly not enough to see the proposal through. The money collected was returned to the donors in 1881. [1.] Alford District Committee of Aberdeen County Council then proposed to build a hospital for infectious diseases in 1894 but initially struggled to acquire a suitable site. At that time plans had been drawn up by Jenkins & Marr for a ‘cottage hospital’ costing £540 exclusive of plumbing, but these plans were abandoned. Two years later, In 1896 Lord Forbes agreed to feu a site on the edge of Bridge of Alford to the Committee on certain conditions, including his approval of the plans and the arrangements for treating the hospital’s sewage.

*Turriff Hospital, photographed in 2018*, *© H.* Blakeman

Dr Watt, the Medical Officer of Health proposed that the design of the hospital should duplicate that at Turriff, completed that year and designed by James Duncan. A temporary building was considered – specifically Speirs patented special hospital the ‘weather bore’ constructed mostly of wood and felt – but rejected in favour of ‘stone and lime’. [2.] Dr Watt’s proposal to replicate the Turriff hospital was accepted, and the committee therefore turned to James Duncan for the plans (by then Duncan was in partnership with his son). It was decided to build just one ward pavilion in the first instance, leaving space for a second on the opposite side of the central administration block for a second, but that was never built.

*Former Alford Hospital. It is still fairly isolated having been built on the edge of the small hamlet of Bridge of Alford, *© H.* Blakeman*

In June 1896 the Banffshire Advertiser carried a description of the proposed hospital. The administration block was to comprise four rooms, two on the ground floor and two in the attic, plus bathroom, pantry, larder and scullery, this would serve partly as offices and partly as staff accommodation. The ward pavilion was to be divided into two wards with a room between for a nurse. Each ward was to accommodate three or four patients. The outhouse to the rear was to provide a washing-house and drying-room, ambulance shed, mortuary, disinfecting chambers and coal-house.[3.]

*Former outhouse, that was the service block to rear of hospital, photographed in 2024 *© H.* Blakeman*

The plans were sanctioned by the Local Government Board in 1896-7 allowing the District Committee to take out a loan for the cost of building works, this was to be paid back over 30 years and entailed a minimal rise in the local rates. Tenders were accepted in March-April 1897 totalling £1,002 15s with Alexander Grant of Alford as mason; A. & W. Hendry of Wartle, carpenters; S. & W. Christie of Dyce, slaters; R. Moir of Inverurie, plasterer; T. Laing & Son of Inverurie plumbers; and Fraser, Hutton & Co. of Insch, painters.[4.]

*Photograph taken from the footpath that leads up the hill behind the former Alford Hospital, with glimpses of the hills and farmland that surround the building, September 2024 *© H.* Blakeman*

The hospital was opened in June 1898. [5.] Unspecified additions were carried out by Walker and Duncan some time after 1898. After the 1929 Local Government Act many county councils were able to rationalise their public health duties, especially regarding provisions for infectious diseases. This led to the building of larger central isolation hospitals and sanatoria and the closure of some of the smaller hospitals. In 1930, the Public Health Committee for Buchan proposed cutting down the number of infectious diseases hospital in the county from twelve to just four. The hospital at Peterhead (Ugie Hospital) was to retain its full status, while the isolation hospitals at Braemar, Ballater, Turriff, Inverurie, Ellon, Alford and Summerfield (Stockethill, Aberdeen) should cease to receive infectious cases as soon as possible. [6.] The hospital was closed in 1932 after which it was leased to the local vet. It was still owned by the local authority in the 1940s but was finally sold. It was adapted to form two dwelling houses. [7.]

Sources

Weekly Free Press and Aberdeen Herald, 19 March 1881, p.6.
Aberdeen Press & Journal, 7 April 1896, p.3.
Banffshire Advertiser, 4 June 1896, p.7.
The Builder, 10 April 1897, p.349 (tender).
B, 20 Aug. 1898, p.168.
Buchan Observer and East Aberdeenshire Advertiser, 16 Dec. 1930, p.5.
Scottish Archive Network catalogue, NHS Grampian Archives.

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