Many of the pages on the historic hospitals website, particularly those for some of the counties in England, have nothing more than a list of sites. Towards the end of last year I began the process of revising those pages. In November I received a query about the location of Sherborne Isolation Hospital. The local museum and library had been unable to help, so I turned my attention to the Dorset page. With the help of digimap and the National Library of Scotland’s map pages online I managed to find Sherbonre’s isolation hospital, to the north-west of the town off the Marston Road, on the site now occupied by Barton Farmhouse.
As yet I have found little else about the hospital – from the map evidence alone it must have been built some time between 1903 and 1927, and was built by the Urban District Council, but it’s a start. At the moment I am just keen to add as much to the page as quickly as I can, so further research will have to wait. If anyone is interested, there may well be more information in the building file at Historic England Archives (the reference is BF 100425).
It was interesting to see how many hospitals that had still been part of the NHS in the early 1990s have since closed. Quite a few have been demolished either completely or partially. The postcard of the Royal National Sanatorium at the top of this post was still the Royal National Hospital until the ’90s when it was converted into retirement apartments. The Shelley Road Branch of the Royal Victoria and West Hampshire Hospital has been largely demolished, as has the former Bridport General Hospital, replaced by a new community hospital in the ’90s. More recently, the remaining sections of the Christchurch Union Workhouse (part of Christchurch Hospital) were demolished around 2015.
The large Royal Naval Hospital on Portland has also mostly now disappeared, the former sick quarters went around 2005 to create Foylebank Way, retirement housing. Only one pavilion of the hospital has been retained, adapted to form the present Portland Community Hospital.
Another loss is the former Princess Christian Hospital and Sanatorium in Weymouth. This striking building was put up at the beginning of the twentieth century, designed by local architects Crickmay & Son. It was taken over as a military hospital during the First World War, and when it was returned to civilian use it, merged with Weymouth’s Royal Hospital on School Street and was renamed Weymouth and District Hospital. Various extensions were built in the 1920s and ’30s, and after bomb damage during the Second World War, the out-patients’ block had to be rebuilt. In 1998 the site was cleared to make way for a new community hospital.
There are some surviving historic hospitals in Dorset. A few still in the NHS estate, others adapted to new uses. My own personal favourite is probably the former St Anne’s Sanatorium in Poole, designed by the Scottish architect Robert Weir Shultz and built in 1909-12 as the seaside branch of Holloway Sanatorium.
St Anne’s remains in hospital use, and continues as a mental health facility. Google street view allows you to take a virtual walk round the outside of the main building. The facing bricks look much redder than in the photograph above. There is also a new wing – opened in 2013 – that respects the Edwardian building in scale and materials without being a pastiche.
The Dorset page now looks a lot more interesting, there are photos and maps, and some snippets of history. That will have to do for the time being, while I get on with revising some of the other pages. I have enjoyed my virtual tour of Dorset, though saddened to find so many buildings have been lost. As always, I welcome any additions to the site if you have photographs that you are willing to share.