Ovenstone Hospital opened in 1896. It was a small infectious diseases hospital built on rising ground about two miles to the north of Pittenweem, in the East Neuk of Fife. It was established by the St Andrew’s District Committee of Fife’s County Council, and designed by the local St Andrew’s architect David Henry. The total cost was around £2,500 including furnishing. [Dundee Courier, 18 Jan. 1896, p.5.] The two-storey building at the centre provided accommodation for the nursing and domestic staff as well as the main kitchen and stores. The wards occupied the wings on either side and are set at right-angles to it. Each ward was on the standard pattern with central duty room and a small ward at each end.

Having been completed and furnished by the end of 1895, opening was delayed because of dampness. On the instruction the architect, fires had been kept lit in order to get the rooms dried through the latter part of January. Dr Pirie of Pittenweem was appointed visiting medical attendant, and the first patient was admitted in February 1896: a farm servant from the Mount Melville district suffering from scarlet fever. [East Fife Record, 21 Feb. 1896, p.4; 20 March 1896, p.4.]

The hospital opened the year before the Public Health Act of 1897 which made the provision of hospitals for infectious diseases by local authorities mandatory. The burden on the rates of contributing to the upkeep of permanent hospitals was often a bone of contention amongst local councillors. The Provost of Anstruther argued against the Town Council contributing to the Ovenstone Hospital and thereby having the use of it for infectious cases in the town. He favoured the purchase of a ‘small iron hospital’ which might be bought for £40 or £50, put up and taken down whenever suitable, and stored in the old washing-house when not in use. [East of Fife Record, 28 Feb. 1896, p.6.]

As well as the central administrative block and the two flanking ward wings, a detached block to the south accommodated the ambulance and disinfector. There was probably a mortuary in this building too. The architect had visited a hospital in Whitehaven, in the north of England, with the County Medical Officer, Dr Nasmyth, on the strength of which a Reck’s disinfector was acquired for the hospital. The ambulance carriage that conveyed patients to the hospital was made by Holmes of Derby.

An extension of the hospital was carried out in 1910-11 for which David Henry was again the architect, the hospital was closed for a while during building works. The original horse-drawn Haynes’ ambulance was still in occasional use in the early 1930s, although by then it was felt to be something of a museum piece. [Fife County Council Annual Report, 1933, p.90.]

By 1942 Ovenstone Hospital had 16 beds, the patients being under the care of one of the local general practitioners. By this date the hospital was judged to be in need of some modernisation: there was no electric light, the wards being lit by oil lamps and heating by an open fires that also heating a pipe running round the edge of the ward. The hospital was not connected to mains sewage but to a cesspool in the grounds. The cooking arrangements were also not up to scratch. It was therefore not deemed suitable to continue as an infectious diseases hospital after the War, but with its substantial buildings, pleasant situation and garden, might be adapted as a home for the elderly and infirm or ‘other similar purpose’. [Department of Health for Scotland, Scottihs Hospitals Survey Report on the South-Eastern Region, 1946, p.84.]

Paraffin lamps were still the only source of lighting in the wards in 1947. The County Council appealed to the Scottish Secretary of State to have electricity installed, and the Dundee Courier seized the opportunity to publish a photograph of a young nurse carrying two oil lamps with the caption ‘Lady of the Lamps’. [Dundee Courier, 21 Jan. 1947, p.3.] Around this time the hospital accommodated convalescent children. It did not transfer to the NHS in 1948, but remained a convalescent home run by Fife County Council. In the 1960s it developed into a residential school for children with a range of additional support needs. Initially it was known as Ovenstone Children’s Home, and by the mid-1970s as Ovenstone Residential School. It was still operating in the early 1990s.

The building to the east of the original hospital buildings was added some time in the later 1950s or early ’60s, perhaps as a classroom.

In recent years the former school was turned into an arts centre: Cobalt Contemporary Art Gallery.