Month: April 2016

The Hospitals Investigator 10

/ Harriet Richardson / 1 Comment

In January 1993 Robert Taylor wrote the tenth in his series of newsletters for the RCHME Hospitals Project team. The text below is primarily his, I have just updated the information in places and added the illustrations. At least two of the hospitals that he and Kathryn Morrison visited back then – Highfield Hospital, Droitwich and the Corbett Hospital, Stourbridge – have since been demolished. The ‘letter from Dorset’ is an account of the fieldwork undertaken in the county, further research was then carried out and reports of the sites written. These reports are deposited at Historic England’s Archives in Swindon. A list of the sites and their site record numbers is appended to the post, and I have added a brief note on their current status if they are no longer in use as a hospital or have been demolished.

Cruciform Observation Wards

During discussions with the Local Government Board in 1908-9 over the design for a new observation ward for the Croydon R.D.C. hospital, Christopher Chart of the firm of E. J. Chart of Croydon, came up with the idea of a cruciform block. His aim was to avoid structural problems met with in the design preferred by the L.G.B., with back-to-back wards, as well as to extend to hospitals the same principles that led to the prohibition of back-to-back houses. The resulting design was accepted, and the ward opened in 1911. It had a central octagonal duty room, and four arms each with three cubicles separated by plate-glass partitions and entered separately from external verandahs. The verandahs are against the East and West sides of the arms.

The Beddington Corner Hospital, near Croydon (later Wandle Valley Hospital). Plan of cruciform cubicle isolation block designed by Christopher Chart
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Extract from the OS map surveyed in 1953-4, the left-hand cruciform block was the one built in 1911, that to the right added later. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
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Detail of the map above. The walls of the cubicles are shown, and the glass-roofed verandahs indicated by the cross-hatching. The entire hospital has been demolished and the site redeveloped for housing.

In 1913 Cambridge Borough Council inspected a number of isolation hospitals before enlarging their hospitals, and decided to adopt a cruciform observation block like that at Croydon. Perhaps this is why they employed the same architect. The Cambridge ward was begun in 1914 and opened in 1915. Like the Croydon hospital, it had three cubicles in each arm, and the verandahs faced East and West. Several improvements were introduced. In the angle of the arms is a small sanitary block, entered only from the verandah.

How many cruciform wards were designed by Chart is not known, but his firm was described in The Hospital of 29 May 1915, pp 179-80, as having ‘specialised in this design of isolation hospitals’.

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Portsmouth Isolation Hospital. Extract from the OS 25-inch map, revised in 1937-8. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

At Portsmouth two cruciform wards were built, one shortly before 1922 and the other probably completed in 1938. They have longer arms than the early wards, and the design is perhaps improved by having the verandahs on the south sides of the arms, and the sanitary blocks at the outer ends where they do not obscure the light.

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Extract from the 2nd-edition OS Map revised in 1896, showing the location of the isolation hospital over the road from the union workhouse. Kingston Prison and Cemetery were to the north-west. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

References: C. Chart, ‘Observation Wards in Isolation hospitals’ in The Hospital, 26 June 1915, pp 277-9: H. F. Parsons, ‘Report on Isolation Hospitals, Supplement to the Annual Report of the Medical Officer of the Local Government Board’ PP, 1912-13, XXXVI, pp 76-7.

Droitwich

Highfield Hospital, Droitwich was founded by the Birmingham Hospital Saturday Fund as a convalescent home in 1917 (see Best of Health for more information on the Birmingham Hospital Saturday Fund, and for an old postcard showing Highfield Hospital see robmcrorie’s flickr page). Following the construction of the new Worcestershire Royal Hospital (a PFI hospital which opened in 2002), Highfield closed and has since been demolished.

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Extract from the 6-inch OS Map, revised in 1902. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

In the early 1990s, a visit to the Highfield Hospital at Droitwich revealed some unexpected benefits enjoyed by the patients. The hospital then specialised in ‘rheumatic and locomotor disorders’ and patients who were used to hobbling around at home as best they could, had their movements more strictly controlled on the wards. Coded messages above the beds informed staff of the restrictions to be placed on the patients’ mobility: CTB = confined to bed; WTT = walk to toilet. Under these conditions the nurse who provided a messenger service between the wards and the local betting shop was doubtless maintaining a necessary service. Those patients who were mobile were allowed to walk in the meadow behind the hospital. One of the amenities of this field was the back door to a nearby public house.

Corbett Hospital

The original Corbett hospital in Stourbridge stood on top of a hill with a magnificent view that included the glass works and before it was turned into a hospital it had been the home of the glass manufacturer, George Mills. Mills, who suffered from mental illness, committed suicide in November 1885, and his house (The Hill) was acquired by John Corbett, a salt producer. Corbett converted the house into a hospital, which opened in 1893.

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Corbett Hospital  Gates, Lodge and Drive to the (former) Corbett Hospital, High Street Amblecote, Stourbridge, photographed in 2014 © Copyright Terry Robinson and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Nearly a hundred years later, it was still functioning. At that time there was a cardiac recovery ward on the first floor of the main pavilion of the grand rebuilding scheme of 1931. The ground floor had been designed as the entrance to the hospital but had been put to other uses. Above the entrance porch was a sun room, then a ward, and the usual service section with bathroom and toilets, duty room, private ward and so on. The entrance had been moved to an insignificant position in the main corridor, and was difficult to find. The ironwork of the staircase was pleasant, but it was the ward itself that proved to be a surprise. Instead of the usual Nightingale-style room with windows on either side, a cross-wall divided the space into two, with the sixteen beds in the ward arranged parallel to the outside walls. This was the original arrangements, not a response to the high incidence of cardiac trouble in Stourbridge. It was an up-to-date arrangement at the time, though not one that Miss Nightingale would have approved of, nor would she have liked the small cubic space per patient, the result of low ceilings, or the bustle of a busy ward with much coming and going, and doctors on continuous duty. The sun room at the end of the ward was the only quiet place, as the patients weren’t well enough to be able to use it – and once they were well enough to do so, they were discharged.

The hospital was demolished in 2007, having been replaced in 2005 by a new building erected in the grounds. There are photographs and a full history of the site on the Amblecote History Society website.

 A letter from Dorset, January 1993

Dorset proved an attractive but disappointing county. The landscape was on a larger scale than expected, and the hospitals on a smaller scale than anticipated. Poole and Bournemouth provided an urban contrast to this rural county, but their major hospitals had been demolished or were being demolished at the time of our visit.

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Extract from Bartholomew’s half-inch maps of England and Wales, published in 1902, showing Poole harbour and Bournemouth. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

Workhouses here in the 1830s did not have any physically separate infirmaries as did those further West, but had the infirm in the main building. Only at Poole did a separate infirmary seem to have been added, and that was all that remained of the workhouse. Wareham was the only workhouse where we know that an isolation block was built, and at Weymouth the V. D. block was the only building to have been demolished in what looked through the scaffolding like a very thorough remodelling. Perhaps the only pleasure came at Cerne where we saw the giant lying deep in the shadows of this grassy hillside.

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The old workhouse, Weymouth, built in 1836. Photographed in 2014. Redeveloped as private residences after years of dereliction © Copyright Neil Owen and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map, surveyed in 1886 showing Poole Union Workhouse. The infirmary was added to the north in 1903 (see also workhouses.org). Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

As usual isolation hospitals were elusive, except at Poole. Weymouth had a large iron hospital of 1902 that had unfortunately been reclad in 1984, and the holiday camp at the same town was almost as bad. In its days as a hospital it had belonged to the Port Sanitary Authority but the wards had been given an extra storey with cantilevered balconies to house the holidaymakers, who had to try and sleep above the pool tables and other delights installed in the wards below.

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Weymouth isolation hospital, extract from the 2nd-edition OS map revised 1926-7. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

We managed to get the car completely covered in mud looking for the Sherborne hospitals, but sadly a farmer had beaten us to it and converted the site into a yard for vehicles that managed like us to get through the mud. The architects of the general hospitals appear to have been unusually keen to disguise their buildings and hide any wards. A classic pavilion hospital at Bournemouth was destroyed with a ball and chain as we watched, although another at the Naval Hospital at Portland survived our gaze. In contrast the county hospital at Dorchester was heavily disguised as a Jacobean country house, and its counterpart at Weymouth was taller and almost as inscrutable. Only a huge inscription told us what the building was.

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Old Dorset County Hospital, Dorchester, photographed in 2008. In Somerleigh Road off Princes Street, the old county hospital designed by Benjamin Ferrey FSA and built in Portland stone in 1841, has now been converted into flats which are very convenient being so near to the centre of town. Benjamin Ferrey (1810-1880) studied under Pugin and became Diocesan Architect to Bath and Wells. He was also commissioned in 1836 to design the area in Bournemouth known as Westover, including the Bath Hotel. © Copyright Sarah Smith and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Most of the cottage hospitals were so small that it seemed that the architects did not bother to make them look like anything at all. By contrast the Yeatman Hospital at Sherborne was a magnificent exercise in Gothic, and the Westminster Hospital at Shaftesbury was fairly good, but neither looked much like a hospital to start with, and both were smothered in modern additions. Bridport had a pretty little hospital that looked like a hospital, was cottagey in scale, and ought to have been listed; it was a rare ray of sunlight. (The hospital has since been demolished, a housing development stands on the site, and a new community hospital has been built on the north side of Bridport.)

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The Royal Naval Hospital for infectious diseases, and the sick quarters, at Castletown, on the north side of Portland. Extract from the 2nd-edition OS Map, revised in 1901. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The Sick Quarters can be seen still under construction in the OS map surveyed in 1889. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
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Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map revised in 1926-7. The sick quarters were extended and developed into a general hospital, the Royal Navy left in 1957 and it became an NHS hospital, and remains a part of the present Portland Community Hospital. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
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To the east of the isolation hospital and sick quarters was an earlier naval hospital, by Balaclava Bay. It had been demolished by the 1920s. Extract from the 2nd-edition OS Map, revised in 1901. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

Portland Naval Base gave us a first that we did not really appreciate at the time, an underground hospital. The presence of some subterranean installation was obvious from the clutch of old concrete vents and single small access ramp, but it was not apparently very large, and seemed to be something like an air-raid shelter serving the above-ground hospital. Drawings at Acton showed that it was in fact a small hospital, attached to the main institution. (There was an out-store for the National Monuments Record at Acton, these plans should now be at Historic England’s archives at Swindon. The  plans may have been part of the Common Services Agency collection. For photographs and more information on the underground hospital see the urbanexplorer.)

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Canford Cliffs, St Anne’s Hospital, south elevation photographed in 2012 © Copyright Mike Faherty and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Bournemouth was full of convalescent homes, and the problems of identification and investigation finally defeated us’ most were hardly worth chasing, and the difficulty of distinguishing between purpose-built and converted buildings made the exercise unfruitful. St Anne’s was the exception, a great curve overlooking the sea and designed by Weir Schultz for convalescing lunatics. (This was the seaside branch of the Holloway Sanatorium, built in 1909-12)

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Dorset County Asylum, later Herrison Hospital, now converted into private housing, named Charlton Down. Extract from the 2nd-edition OS Map revised 1900-1. The private wing (Herrison House) was built to the north-west of the main range, and the western half of the complex above was built first. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

The Dorset lunatics were first cared for at a house at Forston given to the county in the 18th century; it was in the bottom of a narrow valley, the sort of site that was never used for asylums or hospitals. In the middle of the 19th century a more conventional hilltop site not far way was bought, and the new asylum went through most of the usual processes of enlargement. This included about 1900 a large and separate block for paying patients. Although we did not get inside because it had since changed function, the entrance hall and the exterior appearance declared that this was not for the common or pauper madman, but for someone with more refined taste. The exterior was an elaborate riot of terracotta ornament, rather like Digby’s at Exeter, but here there were no workshops or laundries for toiling patients, and the whole resembled a country house set in its gardens.

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Charlton Down, Sherren Avenue, photographed in 2009 © Copyright Chris Downer and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

List of Hospitals in Dorset

Hospital sites recorded as part of the RCHME Hospitals Survey, with grid references and the National Buildings Record number. The files for these sites can be seen at Historic England Archives, Kemble Drive Swindon. See also Dorset

DORSET

ALLINGTON
Bridport Isolation Hospital In the 1960s this was North Allington Hospital for chest diseases. It has been demolished and a new community hospital built on the site SY 456 939: 100478

BLANDFORD FORUM
Blandford Community Hospital (Blandford Cottage Hospital) ST 884 069: 100466

BOURNEMOUTH
Herbert Hospital (Herbert Memorial Convalescent Home) SZ 065 903: 100452
Kings Park Community Hospital (Bournemouth Sanitary Hospital; Bournemouth Municipal Hospital) SZ 118 924: 100403
Royal National Hospital (Royal National Sanatorium for Consumption) Now a gated complex, providing ‘assisted living’ accommodation, or retirement apartments. SZ 083 914: 100243
Royal Victoria and West Hampshire Hospital, Shelley Road Branch (Boscombe Hospital; Royal Boscombe and West Hampshire Hospital) Demolished SZ 111 923: 100401
Royal Victoria and West Hampshire Hospital, Victoria Branch (Royal Victoria Hospital) Converted into flats – Royal Victoria Apartments, tile panels moved to the new Royal Bournemouth Hospital SZ 076 915: 100402

BRIDPORT
Bridport General Hospital demolished SY 459 932: 100419
Port Bredy Hospital (Bridport Union Workhouse) Converted into housing SY 469 931: 100477

CHARMINSTER
Herrison Hospital (Dorset County Asylum) Converted into housing SY 678 947: 100244

CHRISTCHURCH
Christchurch Hospital (Christchurch Union Workhouse Infirmary) The workhouse was latterly known as Fairmile Hospital The infirmary partly survives but the former workhouse buildings have been demolished.  SZ 148 939: 100461

CORFE CASTLE
Wareham Council Smallpox Hospital Converted into housing SY 941 843: 100670

DORCHESTER
Damers Hospital (Dorchester Union Workhouse) Original workhouse largely demolished, new district hospital built on land to the north in the 1970s-80s SY 687 903: 100475
Dorchester Isolation Hospital demolished, Winterbourne Hospital built on site in the 1980s-90s SY 689 891: 100418
Dorset County Hospital converted into flats SY 691 906: 100417
Royal Horse Artillery Barracks Hospital This may actually still be standing – or was in 2014, now within a trading estate SY 686 909: 100476

LYME REGIS
Lyme Regis Hospital Seemingly a nursing home in 2015 SY 336 921: 100422

POOLE
Alderney Hospital (Poole BC Isolation Hospital; Alderney Isolation Hospital) Most of the original ward blocks have been demolished SZ 042 943: 100465
Poole General Hospital (Cornelia Hospital; Cornelia and East Dorset Hospital) rebuilt in the 1960s-70s SZ 020 913: 100464
Poole Hospital (Poole Union Workhouse) rebuilt as the Harbour Hospital, the former workhouse infirmary incorporated into St Mary’s Maternity Hospital SZ 018 914: 100404
St Anne’s Hospital (St Anne’s Sanatorium) SZ 052 888: 100463

PORTLAND
Portland Hospital (Royal Naval Hospital) SY 685 741: 100481

SHAFTESBURY
Westminster Memorial Hospital (Westminster Memorial and Cottage Hospital) ST 860 228: 100487

SHERBORNE
Coldharbour Hospital demolished ST 643 176: 100066
Sherborne Isolation Hospital demolished ST 622 173: 100425
Sherborne School Sanatorium extended ST 635 166: 100424
Yeatman Memorial Hospital (Yeatman Hospital) extended ST 636 167: 100483

ST LEONARD’S AND ST IVES
St Leonard’s Hospital (104th US General Hospital) largely demolished, just a few or the EMS huts were extant in 2015 SU 102 020: 100468

STURMINSTER NEWTON
Sturminster Union Workhouse partly demolished – the front range survives with new buildings to the rear, used as a day centre and a centre for adults with learning disabilities ST 787 148: 100426

SWANAGE
Dorset Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital extended and converted into private housing  SZ 033 782: 100467
Swanage Cottage Hospital SZ 028 784: 100406

WAREHAM TOWN
Christmas Close Hospital (Wareham and Purbeck Union Workhouse) some of the ancillary buildings have been demolished, and it has been converted into housing – Robert Christmas House – with the hospital moved into the c.1960s block adjacent SY 918 874: 100407

WEYMOUTH
Portway Hospital (Weymouth Union Workhouse) converted into housing, some parts demolished SY 675 785: 100479
Westhaven Hospital (Weymouth Corporation Isolation Hospital) seems to have been completely rebuilt in about the 1980s SY 660 795: 100421
Weymouth and District Hospital (Princess Christian Hospital and Sanatorium) original buildings demolished, hospital largely redeveloped in about the 1960s SY 682 803: 100480
Weymouth and Dorset County Royal Eye Infirmary now a hospice SY 683 803: 100423
Weymouth Port Sanitary Authority Hospital the wards still extant in the midst of Chesil Beach Holiday Park SY 666 762: 100420

WIMBOURNE MINSTER
Victoria Hospital (Victoria Cottage Hospital) numerous additions and alterations, but still in use SU 004 002: 100405

Galashiels Cottage Hospital

/ Harriet Richardson / 2 Comments
View of the original section of the cottage hospital, photographed in September 2022 © H. Richardson

Bak in 2016 the future of the former Galashiels Cottage Hospital seemed to be uncertain once again. When the Borders District General Hospital opened at Melrose in 1988, it had been intended that the cottage hospitals at Galashiels and Selkirk should close permanently, but the local health board changed its mind and decided it could find a new use for the buildings. For Galashiels, that new use was a rehabilitation unit for people with long-term mental health problems, and it re-opened as such under the name Galavale House. But more recently there have been concerns that the standard of accommodation is not longer fit for purpose, and a scheme was under consideration in 2015 to relocate services to Crumhaugh House, Hawick. However, when I visited the Galashiels in September, it was still very much in use.

View of the main front © H. Richardson

In 2006 Galavale House and lodge were listed category C (s) for their architectural and local historic interest. The origins of the hospital date back to 1891 when subscriptions were first raised for a cottage hospital in the town. Originally it was intended to be for accident cases, but in the end it took in medical and surgical cases, though paupers were excluded. Sick paupers were cared for at the local poorhouse.

Galashiels Cottage Hospital, engraved view from Building News, 1893

Built to designs by John Wallace of Edinburgh, the hospital was formally opened by the Earl of Dalkeith in November 1893. Wallace was originally from the Borders, and the few architectural commissions that he is known to have carried out were all in this area. In 1891, the year before he was commissioned to design the cottage hospital, he had designed Blynlee Tower in Galashiels.

View of the ward pavilion with its tall canted bay window. The glazing has changed, but otherwise not greatly altered. © H. Richardson

The plan below was not as executed, only the front wards were built, so at first there were just two wards with six beds each, and two single wards for private patients. The local building firm of Robert Hall & Co. carried out the construction work.

Detail showing the proposed plan of the hospital.
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Extract from the Galashiels & Selkirk Almanac and Directory of 1903

As built, the hospital comprised an appealing small scale building. The wide single‑storey centrepiece of the main block has generous roofs with dormers, and the eaves are supported on cast‑iron columns to create a verandah. The wards in the projecting outer bays are lit by broad bay windows.

This might be the nurses’ home (on the left) added in 1929-30. A more recent addition to the right. © H. Richardson

A small nurses’ home was built on the site with thirteen bedrooms in 1929-30 to designs by the local architects J. & J. Hall, John Hall was the nephew of Robert Hall, the builder of the original hospital. In 1938 extensions were built, in sympathetic style, to the south-west (Hume Ward) and north. In that year four beds were set aside for maternity cases.

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Extract from the 25-inch OS map revised in 1930. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The ranges at the back of the hospital, usually these would house kitchen, laundry, sometimes an ambulance shed, mortuary etc. © H. Richardson
Lodge house, perhaps for matron or doctors © H. Richardson

Sources: 

The Builder, 18 June 1892, p.480; Building News, 24 Nov. 1893, p.703: Border Telegraph, 18 August 2015 accessed online 16 April 2016.

Vale of Leven Hospital, the first new NHS hospital in Britain

/ Harriet Richardson / 8 Comments
Postcard of Vale of Leven Hospital from the 1970s

Vale of Leven Hospital, at Alexandria in Dunbartonshire, Scotland, was the first new hospital to be completed in Britain under the National Health Service at a cost of  around £1 million. It was built in 1951-5 on the site adjacent to the Henry Brock Cottage Hospital to designs by John Keppie and Henderson and J. L. Gleave. Joseph Gleave was the lead architect on the project, carrying out extensive planning and constructional research.

Vale of Leven Hospital, photographed in 2006 © Copyright wfmillar and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

The hospital was to accommodate 150 patients, and comprised eight standard units, built of pre-cast concrete on a modular system. Six of the units housed wards the other two ancillary services.  General medical and surgical wards were provided, together with theatres, radiological department and laboratories, out-patient, casualty department, nurses’ teaching school and pharmacy. The general wards were designed on a standard pattern but adaptable for specialisms such as ENT or eye diseases. It was also designed with adaptability in mind: the original flat-roofed, two storey ward units were intended to allow for the addition of a third storey. [1]

Vale of Leven Hospital, photographed in 2013  © Copyright Barbara Carr and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

After the Second World War, although there was a desperate need for new accommodation and to overhaul existing hospital buildings which had suffered from a lack of maintenance during the war, restrictions on capital expenditure meant that it was many years before much new building could take place. The original allocation of funds had to be curtailed in 1949, and then cut almost completely the following year. Thus is 1950 most building work was limited to essential maintenance and to the adaptation of existing buildings, despite the recognition that many of the buildings taken over at the inauguration of the National Health Service fell far short of hospital standards for that time. Limited funding was compounded by scarcity of materials, and a ban on new, non-residential building imposed in November 1951.

Vale of Leven Hospital, photographed in 2006 © Copyright wfmillar and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

The Henry Brock Hospital had opened in 1924 on the outskirts of Alexandria in a converted private house, with a large area of open ground to its west – where the new general hospital was eventually built. Beyond the original bequest of £15,000 to establish the cottage hospital, further funds were gifted by Hugh Brock, brother of the founder, who left a legacy of £2,000, and John Somerville, of Camstradden, Luss, Loch Lomondside, who bequeathed a further £1,000 to the hospital in 1929.[2] Dunbartonshire County Council, with Dumbarton and Clydebank Town Councils, had resolved to build a new 150-bed general hospital in the 1930s and were considering possible sites towards the end of 1937.

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Aerial photograph of Vale of Leven Hospital taken in 2015 by RCAHMS

The outbreak of war in 1939 called a halt to most building projects in Britain that were not related to the war effort. When the prospect of war had become apparent, plans were made for the organisation of emergency hospital accommodation. In 1944, as the end of the war was coming into sight, the Department of Health for Scotland commissioned a survey of the existing hospital resources, covering all local authority and voluntary hospitals, and public assistance institutions. Mental hospitals came under the Board of Control which conducted a similar but separate survey. The Scottish Hospitals Survey was published after the war, and many of its recommendations formed the basis of post-war planning. .[3]

The priorities in the early years of the NHS in Scotland were to increase the number of maternity beds and improve staff quarters and radiology departments.  One of the first new maternity blocks built under the NHS was at Seafield Hospital, Buckie, which opened in 1950 providing a much needed additional 14 beds. Plans were also in hand for a new maternity hospital at Hawkhead, Paisley. Out-patients’ clinics and health centres were also some of the earliest new buildings built by the NHS in Scotland. In Dumbarton a new TB clinic and x-ray department were built at the existing Infectious Diseases Hospital. The first health centres were at Sighthill, Edinburgh built in 1951-3, and Stranraer in 1954-5. [4]

Aerial perspective of the proposed new hospital, 1954

Vale of Leven Hospital was built in the face of post-war financial constraints because it formed a part of the Civil Defence Programme, initiated in response to the Cold War. Glasgow was considered likely to be a prime target once again. Plans were made for the potential evacuation of all hospitals in Glasgow and the surrounding area. Existing hospitals could serve as cushion hospitals, but there was nothing available for the area to the north-west of Glasgow. Alexandria was the ideal location.

Aerial photograph of Vale of Leven Hospital from the 1960s. Henry Brock cottage hospital in foreground to the left

Taking a virtual tour of Vale of Leven Hospital in 2016 via Google street view, some of the outlying parts of the original buildings were in a poor state of repair, particularly around the out-patients’ department. Other areas have been refurbished and modernised, yet retain a sense of their original appearance. Despite its historic and architectural importance the hospital has not been designated as a listed building.

The Vale Centre for Health and Care, photographed after it opened in 2013 © Copyright Lairich Rig and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Just to the east of the hospital a new health centre opened in 2013, the Vale Centre for Health and Care. It is a two-storey building, containing GP and dental surgeries, child and mental health clinics. Constructed on a steel frame, it has timber and zinc cladding and glass curtain walls. Once Vale of Leven Hospital looked just as sparkling as the new health centre, and might have fared better over the last sixty years had money been spent more consistently on its maintenance. The same could be said of the Finsbury Health Centre, another seminal health care building, designed by Lubetkin and Tecton and built in 1937-8 for the London Borough of Finsbury. There too a lack of funding for a full restoration has left parts of the building in a sorry state.

Finsbury Health Centre, centre block with main entrance photographed in 2014 © Copyright Julian Osley and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Sources

  1. Fiona Sinclair, Scotstyle, p.98: PP, Report of the Department of Health for Scotland… 1951, c.7921, p.32.
  2. Dundee Evening Telegraph, 6 Nov 1929, p.4: Sunday Post, 10 August 1924, p.3: Western Daily Press, 12 June 1924, p.3
  3. 10th Annual Report of the Department of Health for Scotland, 1938 PP Cmd.5969
  4. Miles Glendinning, Ranald MacInnes, Aonghus MacKecknie, A History of Scottish Architecture…, : Alistair G. F. Gibb, Off-site Fabrication Pre-assembly and Modularisation, 1999, p.13: David Stark, Charlies Rennie Mackintosh and Co., 1854 to 2004, 2004