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July News in August

/ 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

Mystery Chapel – somewhere in the South East of England

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.

Uppingham smallpox hospital on the 25-inch OS map revised in 1902 CC-BY (NLS)

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.

Herefordshire’s Historic Hospitals

/ 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.

Hertfordshire Hospitals Survey Revisited

/ Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

Hertfordshire was one of the counties covered by the London team of the national hospitals survey, carried out in the early 1990s by the Royal Commission on the Historic Monuments of England. The London team comprised myself and Colin Thom (now Director of the Survey of London). At that time we only investigated hospitals built prior to the inauguration of the NHS in 1948 – so major post-war hospitals, such as those at Welwyn and Stevenage, were excluded.

Welwyn Garden City’s early post-war general hospital was demolished in 2017. Photograph from in February 2017 © Gerry Gerardo, on Geograph

Fieldwork for the survey was carried out in 1991-3. There was not enough time to visit every single site, and some were considered in greater detail than others. The selection had as much to do with ease of access as it did with the historic significance of the buildings. This meant that some ‘important’ sites were either missed out or only briefly dealt with. I am puzzled now as to why some weren’t visited. In Hertfordshire we seem not to have managed to get to Welwyn, Royston or Hitchin, and also didn’t photograph Letchworth Hospital. The rest we visited on various dates between May 1992 and June 1993, while also covering the rest of the South East (Greater London, Essex, Kent, East and West Sussex, and Surrey) as well as Avon, Staffordshire, Shropshire and parts of the West Midlands, added late on to help out the York-based team. We covered a lot of ground, so perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised that I’m struggling to remember visiting some of them.

For each site a building file was created, and these can be consulted in Historic England’s Archive based in Swindon. (The reference numbers for the files can be found on each of the county pages of the gazetteer after the name of the hospital following the grid reference.) These files vary in content, but generally have a report, photographs and maps.

Follow the link to the Hertfordshire page of this website for more details of individual sites.

What does Pevsner say?

The best known architectural guide to the buildings of Britain is the series begun by Nikolaus Pevsner after the Second World War. The Pevsner guides are generally the first place to look for information about the historic buildings throughout the UK. The original Pevsner guide to Hertfordshire was published in 1953, with an extensive revision published in 1977 (revised by Bridget Cherry). A further revised guide with new material edited by James Bettley was published by Yale University Press in 2019. I have relied heavily on this for updates to the condition of the various hospitals that we visited back in the 1990s. However, hospitals, especially former hospitals, are not easy to find in the guides and often receive only cursory mentions, if any at all. It is not a reflection of their historic significance as public buildings, but rather their relatively lowly architectural status, as they were seldom designed by ‘top’ architects, many are more interesting for their plans than their outward appearance, and where there have been many additions and alterations they can seem muddled and incoherent.

Original central administration block of West Herts Hospital, Hemel Hempstead, from the 1870s rebuilding of the infirmary. Photographed in 2018 © Dormskirk CC BY-SA 3.0

In its introductory overview, the guide notes that the first purpose-built hospitals appeared around the same time as the first workhouses built after the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The West Herts Infirmary at Hemel Hempstead was built in 1831-2 followed swiftly by Hertford’s County Hospital in 1832-3 to designs by Thomas Smith. In 1840 Hitchin Infirmary was built designed by Thomas Bellamy. The last two have since been replaced, and only the core of their original buildings has been retained. Bellamy’s Hitchin Infirmary is now Bellamy House – the remainder of the site now occupied by a Waitrose supermarket. Hertford County Hospital has been replaced by a new building constructed alongside in 2003-4 (architects Murphy Phillips) leaving the old building rather marooned. West Herts is a typical multi-phase hospital, with much of its built heritage remaining in use, including the early Cheere House of 1831 and Coe and Robinson’s 1875-7 pavilion-plan infirmary (see photo above).

Former Watford Union Workhouse from Vicarage Road, photographed in May 1992. The former workhouse building became part of Watford District General Hospital © Harriet Blakeman

As well as general hospitals, there was a private asylum at Much Hadham established around 1803 (principally of architectural interest to the Guide because it occupied The Palace), and a crop of workhouses. Of the latter, there are partial survivals at Buntingford (1836-7 by W. T. Nash); St Albans (1836-7 by John Griffin); Ware (1839-40 by Brown & Henman) and more substantially at Watford (1836-7 by T. L. Evans) where the workhouse developed into the general hospital.

Architectural aerial perspective view of proposed asylum, Leavesden, from The Builder

During the Victorian and Edwardian eras Hertfordshire attracted children’s homes and mental hospitals, including the Metropolitan Asylums Board’s ‘Imbeciles’ Asylum’, later Leavesden Hospital, at Abbots Langley designed by John Giles & Biven and built in 1868-70. This asylum was the twin of Caterham Hospital which served the south of the Metropolitan area.

View looking up the central spine of the hospital with the ends of the ward pavilions to the left, water tower on right. All of the buildings in the photograph were demolished as part of the redevelopment of the site. © Harriet Blakeman

Of Leavesden Hospital only the former administration block, chapel and recreation hall have been retained, converted to the residential Leavesden Court – a gated development – with new housing built to the north and west on the site of the former ward pavilions and parkland to the east.

Setting aside children’s homes, the Guide also notes Holman & Goodrham’s TB sanatorium built for the National Children’s Home built in 1909-10 (survives as the King’s School); Rowland Plumbe’s Napsbury Hospital built in 1901-5 (partially demolished, parts converted to housing); and G. T. Hine’s Hill End Asylum of 1895-9 (largely demolished). The only ‘local hospitals’ during this period mentioned in the Pevsner Guide are the cottage hospital at Watford of 1885 designed by C. P. Ayres (still extant) and the Sisters Hospital at St Albans designed by Morton M. Glover of 1893 (later extensions demolished, original main buildings converted to housing).

One of the former ward blocks of Hill End Hospital, photographed in May 1992. Only the chapel and the southernmost blocks were retained when the site was redeveloped for housing. © Harriet Blakeman

In the 1920s Royston Hospital was built to designs by Barry Parker (still an NHS hospital, but much extended). Then in the 1930s the large new mental hospital at Shenley was built, designed by W. T. Curtis (mostly demolished), and ‘a rather utilitarian general hospital’ at Welwyn designed by H. G. Cherry (still an NHS hospital with a newer block built to the south).

Part of the former Shenley Hospital, photographed in May 1992, now demolished, © Harriet Blakeman. Only the chapel, medical superintendent’s house and one small accommodation block were retained
The chapel at Shenley Hospital, photographed in May 1992 © Harriet Blakeman

There is no mention in the introduction of the post-war hospitals, and the Lister at Stevenage is quickly covered by two sentences that provide the date (1966-72), the architect (E. A. C. Maunder of the North West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board) and summary of its appearance (A central Block of nine storeys, a symmetrical elevation with projecting balconies, surrounded by extensive lower buildings.) Before too long, I hope to produce a separate post on the Lister and the other post-war hospitals in Hertfordshire.

Hertfordshire Hospitals in the 2020s

Hospital services in the 21st Century have become significantly more complex since the early years of the NHS. The NHS currently has thirteen hospitals in the county (not including those that were formerly in Hertfordshire which now lie within Greater London – such as in Barnet). There have been at least 44 hospitals in Hertfordshire in the past, not including a few small local authority hospitals for infectious diseases. The decline in the number of hospitals reflects increasing centralisation of services and changing practices in medical care and treatment. Of the 44 that feature in the Hertfordshire gazetteer page, only five are still NHS hospitals; 15 have been converted to housing or other use, including partial demolition; and 24 have been either entirely or largely demolished. The scale of demolition is larger than even that figure suggests, as it includes some of the largest hospital complexes in the county.

Former Harperbury Hospital, photographed in May 1992 © Harriet Blakeman

It has been depressing to discover the extent of destruction of former hospital buildings, a great many of them only having been demolished in the last ten to twenty years. A great deal more should and could have been retained, particularly of the large former mental hospitals such as Shenley, Harperbury and Hill End.

Former St Pancras Industrial Schools that became part of Abbots Langley Hospital, photographed in the early 1990s, now demolished. © Harriet Blakeman

Leavesden Hospital, as mentioned above, has largely been demolished to make way for housing. The hospital also had an annexe to the south. This had formerly been the St Pancras Schools, together with detached hospital and babies home. It had an Emergency Medical Scheme spider block built at the start of the Second World War on vacant ground behind the buildings which became Abbots Langley Hospital when transferred to the NHS in 1948. These emergency hutted buildings were intended to be temporary, and it is perhaps more surprising that they lasted into the 1990s than that few of them are left in the 2020s.

The wartime extension of EMS hutted ward blocks at Abbots Langley Hospital, photographed in the early 1990s, now demolished. © Harriet Blakeman

I have always had a few favourite hospitals – ones that were particularly attractive or interesting. In Hertfordshire, Shenley was one – at least in part because of its lovely grounds. The hospital was laid on the Porters Park estate, along with the mature landscape around the mansion house.

Porters Park mansion was adapted for convalescent patients at Shenley Hospital. © Harriet Blakeman

Porters Park has a complicated history having been substantially rebuilt or remodelled on more than one occasion. Its present appearance is largely due to the rebuilding of 1902 for C. F. Raphael by the architect C. F. Harold Cooper. The house and estate were transformed into Shenley Mental Hospital in the 1930s. The map below show the extent of the hospital in the 1950s. It was designed on a colony plan, whereby all the patients’ accommodation and treatment blocks were detached, and arranged in the manner of a village, with central service buildings and chapel.

Shenley Hospital on the OS map surveyed in the 1950s CC-BY (NLS)

The map below shows the modern housing development on the site. The existing buildings are shaded orange. The map is overlaid on the 1950s OS map above – and the grey shapes of the hospital blocks can just be seen behind. Only the PW – place of worship – and the small block to its south are from the hospital era.

Overlay map of Shenley showing the new housing development on the former hospital site. OS map of the 1950s and OS Opendata CC-BY (NLS)

Napsbury was another favourite – here too the landscape setting was particularly good, but the architect for this large asylum, Rowland Plumbe, was allowed to bring his characteristic style to the buildings, which were more decorative than Hine’s more pedestrian Hill End. The picturesque qualities of Napsbury no doubt made its adaptation appealing for the developers of the site, and it is now at the heart of Napsbury Park – a residential development near St Albans largely constructed between 2002 and 2008 (see blog post on Napsbury here).

One of the detached villas at Napsbury Hospital, photographed in the 1990s. Sadly, this villa was demolished © Harriet Blakeman

If I had to name a top three of Hertfordshire hospitals, Napsbury would probably be at number one, with Shenley at number two. At number three I would put Bennett’s End – and I was particularly saddened to see that this one has been demolished. It was the perfect small local authority isolation hospital, built in accordance with the Local Government Board’s model plans.

Aerial perspective of Bennett’s End Hospital published in 1914, the hospital looked remarkably similar to this when we visited in the 1990s.
Bennett’s End Hospital, administration block © Harriet Blakeman

There were a few other losses that I am particularly saddened by. Potters Bar Hospital was a charming low-rise late 1930s Deco-ish building that has been replaced by a Tesco supermarket. A new Community Hospital was built on Barnet Road.

Potters Bar and District Hospital, Mutton Lane, built c.1938, closed 1995 © Harriet Blakeman

I was also shocked to find that I had missed Welwyn Garden City’s Queen Elizabeth II Hospital, demolished in 2017 after the new QEII was built on the adjacent site. The original QEII opened in 1963 and was one of the first new general hospitals to be completed by the NHS. There is a little more information on the Hertfordshire page.

Model of the Welwyn-Hatfield new hospital, published 1958 by the North-West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board

It has been a sobering exercise, revisiting the survey of Hertfordshire’s hospitals. Far more has gone than I had anticipated. We knew at the time that the NHS was winding down the majority of the large former mental hospitals in England. There had also been an increase in hospital-building during the 1980s with many ‘nucleus’ district general hospitals being built. Together this contributed to a great many hospital closures and redundant buildings. Replacing the older pre-war hospitals had been an early ambition of the new NHS in 1948, but it has taken most of the second half of the twentieth century to come close to that ambition.

Dorset’s hospitals

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Royal National Sanatorium, Bournemouth

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.

Sherborne Isolation Hospital, OS map 1927 (CC-BY NLS)

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.

Part of Christchurch Hospital, demolished c.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.

The former Portland Hospital, photographed in the early 1990s.

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.

Princess Christian Hospital, postcard c.1905

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 Hospital, photographed in the early 1990s.

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.

Bristol Lunatic Asylum, now the Glenside Campus of UWE

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Glenside Hospital as it was in 1992 ,  © H. Richardson

For nearly twenty years now the faculty of Health and Applied Sciences of the University of the West of England has occupied the old Bristol Lunatic Asylum. The asylum, latterly Glenside Hospital, was wound down from 1993 when it merged with neighbouring Manor Park Hospital.  New facilities for mental health patients were constructed on that side, and it was renamed Blackberry Hill Hospital. The University faculty was formed in 1996 when the existing faculty of Health and Community Studies merged with Avon and Gloucestershire College of Health and Swindon College of Health Studies.

The administration block at the centre of the former hospital,  photographed in 1992 © H. Richardson

The former hospital is one of the most attractive architecturally of the many county asylums built for paupers in the mid-nineteenth century. Its history has the added interest of its association with one of Britain’s greatest modern artists, Stanley Spencer, who worked as a medical orderly here during the First World War when the hospital was requisitioned by the War Office. During that time it was renamed Beaufort War Hospital. There is a museum on the site housed in the chapel.

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Bristol Pauper Lunatic Asylum first opened in 1861. Patients had previously been sent to St Peter’s Hospital, the city workhouse that had been set up in a converted Jacobean house near St Peter’s church (see map below). By the 1850s this had become inadequate and there had been ‘certain distressing casualties’; one case at least had been the subject of an inconclusive investigation. There was much local hostility to the idea of building a county asylum, principally on the grounds of the increased burden on the rates. It was hoped that a swap might be organised with the workhouse at Stapleton, moving the pauper lunatics there and the ordinary paupers into St Peter’s, or of just converting some of the workhouse buildings into lunatic wards. But these plans were quashed by the Poor Law Commissioners who flatly refused to sanction the conversion of any part of the workhouse.

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Extract from Millerd’s Map of Bristol, 1671 (public domain image via commons.wikimedia)

In the interim, legislation governing the provisions for pauper lunatics was tightened up, with an amendment to the Lunacy Act making it harder for counties and boroughs to avoid providing suitable accommodation. With no option but to construct a new asylum, a competition was held for the design. There were 27 entries, judged by the building committee with advice from Anthony Salvin. In March 1857 the best three were awarded prizes, the first premium went to Thomas Royce Lysaght of Bristol (£100), second were Medland & Maberly of London and Gloucester (£50), and third J. H. Hirst of Bristol (£25). Lysaght’s plans were preferred as they seemed to meet the requirements while remaining within the restricted budget, and the architect had experience of asylum construction, having been responsible for that at Cork. Mr Herapath¹ congratulated the committee for having chosen well. They had ‘taken care not to adopt the most beautiful plan, but had chosen one which was neat but not gaudy’. It was ‘quite sufficiently ornamental’. [Bristol Mercury, 21 March 1857, p.6]

Ground-plan of the asylum as first built, published in the 16th Annual Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1862

Henry Crisp has sometimes been credited with the design of the original buildings (including by Historic England in the list description), but he only arrived on the scene later and it was Lysaght who got the job. Construction began in 1858 and after it was finished it was dubbed the Lunatic Pauper Palace on account of its architectural grandeur and the high cost of building (£27,500 for the building including lodge, stables, roads, planting, draining, boundary walls, supply of gas ‘etc’). The clerk of works was Mr Long, and the building contractors were J. & J. Foster, with Mr Yalland, mason; Mr Melsom, St James’s Barton, plasterer and painter; Mr Abbot, plumber; Mr Williams, glazier and Mr Harris, gas-fitter. [Bristol Mercury and Western Counties Advertiser, 20 Oct 1860, p.2]

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Extract from the 6-inch OS map surveyed in 1880-1. By this date additional wings had been built to the west and east. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

The cost was not far removed from the half-a-dozen or so other asylums that were built around the same time; those in Cumberland and Northumberland, for the same number of patients, were estimated to cost £20,00 and £42,427 respectively. It was also considerably less than the figure being bandied about in the press some years earlier when it was reported that Lord Palmerston had ordered the authorities of Bristol to build a new lunatic asylum at an estimated cost of £45,000 (although the following year the figure reported was a more reasonable £20,000).  [The Western Times, 11 Feb 1854]

The Lodge, photographed in 1992 © H. Richardson

It was designed in the fashionable Italianate style, the front ‘well broken up’ and forming ‘without superfluous ornament’ … ‘an exceedingly picturesque structure’, and built from Pennant stone that was mostly quarried on site, the quarries were then used for water storage beneath the kitchens. The asylum could accommodate 200 patients, with one-third in single rooms (a few of which were padded cells), the remainder in associated dormitories containing between six and eleven beds. In addition there were infirmary wards, providing a total of 22 beds. A measure of fire-proof construction was achieved through rolled iron floor joists filled in between with concrete, apart from in the offices and stores. Fire plugs for attaching hose pipes were provided at four points and the towers contained large reservoirs of water.

The Commissioners in Lunacy published a report on the asylum in 1861 following an inspection of the buildings in October the previous year by two of the Commissioners, Robert Lutwidge (Lewis Carroll’s uncle) and Dr James Wilkes. The main building was located on the northern boundary of the site, the principal elevation facing south-east. It was approached from the lodge at Fishponds along an ornamentally planted avenue. All the ground to the south of the building, amounting to around 17 acres, was used as a vegetable garden. Patients largely occupied the apartments on the south side of the building, staff and services the north side. The latter included the porter’s room, reception room, visiting room, committee room, apartments and office for the clerk or steward, rooms for the engineer and stores. In the central block, which acted as a buffer between the male and female sides of the building, were staff apartments: on the ground floor those of the Assitant Medical Officer and the Matron, the Medical Superintendent’s residence occupied the first and second floors, and servants had bedrooms on the third floor.

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The dining-hall, which continues to serve its original function at the Glenside Campus UWE,  photographed in December 2013 by Nick , licensed under creative commons CC BY 2.0 

The kitchens were on the ground floor and the dining-hall above – a lift being installed to take food from one to the other. There was a chapel within the main complex, capable of holding 150 patients, located adjacent to the dining hall which could seat the same number. The galleries for the patients were 12 feet wide, were heated by open fire-places, and were positioned to take advantage of the views over the surrounding landscape (‘commanding good views of the picturesque country round’). Window seats encouraged patients to sit and contemplate the scenery. There were also day rooms, larger rooms with two fire-places. Every ward had direct access to the airing grounds, which were ornamentally laid out, with walls low enough to allow patients to see over them.

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The laundry photographed during the First World war, posted on flickr by Nick , licensed under creative commons CC BY 2.0

Heating and ventilating for the ‘asylum portion’ was by Haden & Son of Trowbridge. The towers at the extreme ends of the building extracted foul air from the wards, which was then conveyed through the roofs in a pupose-built channel. The same firm supplied the kitchen equipment. On the female side was a ‘laundry ward and establishment’ consisting of a 10-bed ward for the more convalescent patients, a receiving-room for soiled linen, a wash-house, laundry, room for sorting clean linen, and nearby were drying machines and boilers. Corresponding with this on the male side were workshops, with a ‘workshop ward’, carpenter’s, shoemaker’s and tailor’s shops.  The dead-house and postmortem room were also at this end, ‘being nearer the road for funerals’.

The asylum church added to the site in 1882 replacing the room within the asylum that have previously served the purpose. © H. Richardson

There were various phases of extensions to the asylum. It was first enlarged in 1875-7 when the wings to the west and east were added, then in 1882 a detached chapel was built, the original one being absorbed into the hall. The chapel was designed by a local architect, E. Henry Edwards in a ‘Norman Gothic’ style to seat 350 souls. The foundation stone was laid in September 1880, the building contractors were Forse and Ashley of Bristol. [Bristol Mercury & Daily Post, 25 Sept 1880, p.8]

Extract from the second edition OS map revised in 1912 showing the asylum and neighbouring workhouse. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.

Henry Crips and Oatley were the architects for the additions carried out in two phases between 1887-91. The first phase comprised four new wings, mortuary and workshops, for which the building contractor was A. Krauss of Russell Town, Bristol. The second phase comprised an ‘entirely new’ administration and residential block providing for the greatly enlarged asylum – it had expanded to from its original accommodation for 250 patients to an anticipated 1,000 patients.  For this phase the general building contractor was A. J. Beaver of Bedminster, and R. Withycombe of Bristol was the clerk of works. Fire-proof floors were carried out by Dennett & Ingle of Whitehall.

Former Glenside Hospital, general view looking north-east, photographed in 1992 © H. Richardson

It was at this period that the impressive clock tower was built, rising to 120 ft with clock faces on each side. These were supplied by Potts & Sons of Leeds, and were 8 ft in diameter with illuminated dials. Bells truck the quarters and the hours. A strictly time-tabled routine had obviously become a key feature of the running of the asylum. [Building News, 10 April 1891, p.500]

This detail from the perspective view of the asylum published in Building News shows the additions at the south end of the original wings

Further additions were carried out in 1888-90, and then again in 1897-1902. This time the Visiting Committee dispensed with the services of an architect and appointed H. R. Withycombe, the clerk of works who had served under Crisp and Oatley, to supply plans and supervise construction. (There seems to be some doubt as to whether Withycombe actually designed the buildings or if another architect was involved.)[Western Daily Press, 16 April 1902, p.7]

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Glenside Campus aerial photograph 2014 by Rodw, reproduced under creative commons CC BY-SA 3.0

During the First World War the asylum was requisitioned as a military hospital for the war wounded and renamed Beaufort War Hospital; the existing patients were relocated to other asylums, but some returned in 1919 when the military handed the hospital back to the City. Cary Grant’s mother, Elsie Leach, is said to have been one of those readmitted after the war. Although officially now called Bristol Mental Hospital, it continued to be known as Bristol Asylum locally, well into the 1920s. In 1959 it changed its name again to Glenside Hospital. The conversion to the Glenside campus of the University of the West of England seems to have been a particularly happy one, preserving the old buildings and their setting.

¹ Mr Herapath, probably William Herapath, Professor of Chemistry (1796-1868), a magistrate and prominent Town Councillor.