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Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary

December 13, 2025December 14, 2025 / Harriet Richardson / 2 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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July News in August

August 10, 2025August 10, 2025 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

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

Mystery Chapel

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

Uppingham

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

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

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

Historic Hospitals in the Highlands of Scotland

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

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

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

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

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

Lincoln County Hospital

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Orkney Revisited

July 6, 2025July 6, 2025 / Harriet Richardson / 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Ground floor schematic plan of the Balfour*

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

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

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

Notes – see also the Orkney page of the website

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

April News

April 18, 2025 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Developments in Devon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Start to Revising Cumbria

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

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

Ten Years Ago This Month

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

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

Insch & District War Memorial Hospital

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References:

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

Bridge of Alford Hospital

October 12, 2024 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources

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

St Vincent’s Hospital, Kingussie

August 16, 2024 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

*St Vincent’s Hospital, photographed in August 2022 © H. Blakeman*

Perched high above Kingussie sits the former St Vincent’s Hospital, empty and vulnerable to the attentions of vandals since it closed in 2021. It was replaced by the new Badenoch and Strathspey Community Hospital at Aviemore.

The history of the hospital spans more than a century. It first opened in 1901 as the Grampian Sanatorium, founded by Dr Walter de Watteville who had already begun treating patients on the open-air principle in 1898 at his home ‘Sonnhalde’. De Watteville initially added a wing to his house, with separate entrance. This has some claim to being the first privately instituted TB sanatorium in Scotland.

There was sufficient demand for treatment that de Watteville was able to build a larger sanatorium in 1900 which was opened in June 1901. It occupied a large site, of ten acres, laid out with walks – gentle exercise being part of the ‘treatment’ for TB. Patients were also thought to benefit from inhaling the scent of pine trees – of which there were many in the surrounding woods.

The new sanatorium was designed by the local architect A. Mackenzie, with Alexander Cattanach as the mason. It has a south-easterly aspect, the original bedrooms for the patients all on this side of the building with corridors behind. Their rooms had stained and polished wood floors, walls painted with ‘duresco’ (a water-based paint) and had rounded angles. The furniture was also specially designed. At the ends of the building on the ground floor were larger rooms used as dining and day-rooms. The kitchens were in a service wing at the rear, along with staff accommodation.

The distinctive round-arched windows no longer have their original glazing which were sash windows with a ‘rounded revolving fanlight’ above. Some of the rooms at the centre of the building gave out onto a veranda or balcony, via French doors. The engraved view published in Walters’ Sanatoria for Consumptives (below) shows patients lying on camp beds on the uncovered veranda in front of the hospital. The nature of the revolving fanlights can also be seen: they tilted on side pivots.

*Grampian Sanatorium (later St Vincent’s Hospital) from F. R. Walters,* Sanatoria for Consumptives, *published in 1905.*

The sanatorium was heated by open fires, lighting was by electricity. Dr de Watteville acted as the medical superintendent and his wife as matron, helped by a medical assistant, two nurses and domestic staff. [F. R. Walters, Sanatoria for Consumptives, 3^rd edn. 1905, pp.189-90.]

*Dr Walther’s Nordrach Sanatorium, from F. R. Walters, Sanatoria for Consumptives, published in 1905.*

The inspiration behind the design of the sanatorium, and the treatment conducted within it, was Nordrach Sanatorium in the Black Forest of Germany run by Dr Otto Walther. A small clutch of sanatoria were named after the German hospital in Britain – including Nordrach on Dee, Banchory (later Glen-o-Dee Hospital), and Nordrach upon Mendip, near Bristol.

*St Vincent’s Hospital, rear wing, photographed in August 2022 © H. Blakeman*

In 1917 de Watteville sold the sanatorium to Dr Felix Savy, who increased the capacity of the hospital slightly – from 18 to 27 beds by 1926. Artificial pneumothorax was made available from around 1926, Dr Savy being a pioneer of this surgical technique to collapse the infected lung. He also introduced X-ray equipment, UV light and laboratory facilities.

In 1934 the sanatorium was purchased by the Sisters of the Order of the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, although Dr Savy remained as the physician in charge. The Sisters had the rear extension built as living quarters, and created a chapel above the main entrance. The photographer, Oscar Marzaroli, was a patient in the 1940s. The sanatorium was not transferred to the NHS in 1948, although it was used for NHS patients for a few years until the demand for beds for TB cases declined. By the mid-1950s the decline in TB led to many former sanatoria being adapted to new uses. St Vincent’s became a home for the elderly in 1956. As the residents increasingly required nursing care, by the early 1970s the Order planned to create wards for geriatric patients (this may relate to work by J. G. Quigley and Partners, architects, Glasgow noted on the Dictionary of Scottish Architects for 1969-71 for the Sisters.). The interior was remodelled in 1973-4 to convert the ground floor into a geriatric hospital unit, run by Grampian Health Board, while the upper floor remained a residential home run by Highland Regional Council. As part of the works, a large new day room was created at the west side, the old fireplaces and chimneys removed. It was still run by the Sisters of the Order, but finding staff was proving increasingly difficult and in 1986 the home hospital was bought by the NHS. The upper floor was converted to provide a psychogeriatric unit in 1988-9. [J. C. Leslie adn S. J. Leslie, The Hospitals of Badenoch & Strathspey, 2022.]

Ovenstone Hospital, Fife

March 10, 2024March 21, 2025 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

*Former Ovenstone Hospital, photographed February 2023*, *© H. Blakeman*

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.

*Ovenstone Hospital from the 25-inch OS map revised in 1912, reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland CC-BY (NLS)*

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.]

*One of the former* *ward block, photographed February 2023 © H. Blakeman*

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.]

*South elevation of the ambulance garage and disinfection range, February 2023* *© H. Blakeman*

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.

*Ovenstone Hospital, c.1920-30 © Courtesy of HES (Francis M Chrystal Collection)*

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.]

*View from the south-west, February 2023*, © *H. Blakeman*

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.]

*Probably the former ambulance garage, disinfecting room and mortuary*, *photographed February 2023 © H. Blakeman*

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.

*Ovenstone Hospital on the OS map revised in 1968 CC-BY (NLS)*

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.

*post-war addition to site, photographed February 2023 © H. Blakeman*

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

Portree Hospital

December 19, 2022May 3, 2023 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

In the early 1960s the NHS built a new hospital at Portree and substantially enlarged and extended the Mackinnon Memorial Hospital at Broadford. There was considerable controversy surrounding these projects at the time. From a cost and efficiency point of view, the Northern Regional Hospital Board wanted just one central hospital and Broadford was their preferred location being nearer to the mainland and therefore easier for visiting consultant specialists. But Skye is a large island community, with its population fairly evenly spread between north a south, making travel on narrow roads in bad weather less than ideal, especially for maternity cases. Even today, the journey by car from the far north of the island to the bridge that links Skye to the mainland in the south can take around two hours, in good weather during the summer. Until the mid-1990s you would have to add in the time for a ferry crossing to the mainland, as the bridge was only opened in 1995.

*View of the garden front of Portree Hospital*, *photographed October 2020, © H. Richardson*

The two new hospital buildings still resulted in a reduced and rationalised service, as four hospitals had been transferred to the National Health Service in 1948, whereas today just two are in operation. The new hospital at Portree replaced the old fever hospital there and prompted the closure of the John Martin Hospital at Uig (also in the north of the island). The small Gesto Hospital, at Edinbane continued in use until 2007, having staved off successive attempts at closure from the 1990s.

*Former Gesto Hospital, Edinbane, Skye, photographed in 2010, © Carol Walker*

Replacing the hospitals on Skye with a single new one had been proposed during the Second World War when the existing hospitals had been surveyed in 1942 as part of the groundwork leading up to establishing a national health service after the war. This national survey of hospital buildings was undertaken by pairs of medical professionals who were assigned one of five regions. Questionnaires were sent out to all the hospitals providing basic information about the number of beds available, the type of patients catered for, etc. The Survey was published in 1946, and fairly recently the Wellcome Library has digitised the reports which can be accessed online either via the Wellcome or on the Internet Archive.

*View of Portree Harbour. The hospital is further round to the right, out of shot. Photographed October 2020, © H. Richardson,*

The Report for the Northern Region suggested that Portree might be the most suitable location for this single new hospital for the island. But no further progress was made either immediately after the war or in the early years following the establishment of the National Health Service in 1948. When the Northern Regional Hospital Board decided to build a new hospital it favoured Broadford over Portree, as not only was it more convenient for consultants from the mainland, but a hospital located there could also serve parts of the adjacent mainland. The local Board of Management and the local general practitioners were brought on side, and the proposal was supported by the Department of Health. However, when it was announced to the public in 1951 there was a local outcry. The Secretary of State for Scotland, James Stuart, promised the local Inverness MP, Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton, that in view of the strong feeling in Skye, he would see that no final decision on the location of the new hospital would be made without ‘direct consultation with local people’.

*Large-scale OS map surveyed 1965, reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland (CC-BY) NLS*

Matters stalled following the economic restrictions imposed after 1951, with the outbreak of the Korean War and Britain’s support of the U.S.A. leading to funds being redirected from welfare to re-armament. The question of a new hospital for Skye was not revived until 1954 when fresh proposals for an addition of 12 beds to the Broadford hospital was put forward to the Department of Health by the Chairman of the Northern Regional Hospital Board. Although the Department was supportive, there remained the issue of the Secretary of State’s promise about local consultation.

*View of the north side of the hospital, with the original out-patients’ wing on the right*, *photographed October 2020, © H. Richardson,*

How that consultation might be done was discussed between the Regional Board and the Department’s officers in the Spring of 1956. The limited funding and a general lack of clear understanding between the Department in Edinburgh and the Regional Board in Inverness meant that no further progress was made. In 1958 an internal inquiry was held, the Department being reconciled to the need to go to exceptional lengths to placate local feeling. The compromise reached was to run two hospitals, with a new one at Portree and an extension to the one in Broadford, much to the irritation of the Regional Board who only gave up on their wish for a single, larger hospital, with considerable reluctance.

*Detailed view of the former out-patients’ wing, with its curved end*, *photographed October 2020, © H. Richardson,*

The Regional Architect, David Polson Hall, was put in charge of the design and planning of the new buildings. Polson Hall was originally from Stonehaven and had studied architecture in Aberdeen in the 1920s before becoming chief assistant to the architect R. Leslie Rollo in 1931. In 1954, Polson Hall and colleagues at the Regional Board visited the RIBA Exhibition on the Design of Health Buildings. The two projects on Skye proceeded in tandem. Estimates for the Portree hospital were received in 1961, but were higher than the amount available so revisions to the plans had to be made. Final working drawings were not completed until May 1962, and work finally got under way in March 1963.

*View from the north-west*, *photographed October 2020, © H. Richardson*

It is difficult not to see Portree hospital as old-fashioned, in architectural style if not in plan. It is a small L-shaped, single-storey and attic building set into the hillside. A contemporary photograph (see below) taken when the hospital was opened makes it appear over-scaled compared with the neighbouring houses, despite its smallness as a hospital. The construction was traditional, in synthetic stone and brickwork, roughcast with pitched roof finished in green slates. The long, west side of the hospital contained the in-patient accommodation, with wards and a day room on the west side of the long axial corridor commanding a fine view over the bay (see plan below). The east side of the corridor had ancillary rooms: WCs, bath, sterilising room, labour room, stores and Matron’s office. The main entrance was on this side, leading to a waiting area and staff office. There were twelve beds in all, half of which were for maternity cases. The largest ward had four beds, the others were three twin rooms and two singles.

*View of Portree Hospital from across the estuary just after it opened. From* The Hospital, *September 1965*

The shorter wing to the north housed a small out-patients’ clinic, with a separate entrance and waiting area. The hospital was to be attended by visiting consultants but would be run by two local practitioners, the first in post were Dr John Morrison of Portree and Dr Calum Og MacRae from Uig.

*Photograph taken in about 1989-90 before the curved end of the out-patients’ wing was filled in and raised a storey.* *© H. Richardson,*

At the entrance to the out-patients’ clinic, the chief architectural feature was the semi-circular porch – a faint echo of a pre-war era of an ocean liner moderne aesthetic. Its original perky seaside charm was marred by infilling and the addition of a second storey in 2005-6. Prosaically enough, the porch was intended as a pram shelter. The attic floor had accommodation for ten resident staff. There were fireplaces in the sitting rooms in addition to central heating, the decoration was described in The Hospital as ‘contemporary in light tone colours with wallpaper used in the sitting rooms, main hall, etc. The furnishings are all of contemporary design in vivid bright colours to show up against the light-coloured walls.’

*Ground plan of the hospital as originally built, from* The Hospital, *September 1965*

Portree hospital was officially opened on 31 March 1965 by A. A. Hughes, Under-Secretary at the Scottish home and Health Department. I am not quite sure what its future is. A new hospital has been built next to the MacKinnon Memorial at Broadford, so the fate of the older hospital there is perhaps also in doubt.

Further Information and references: J. C. Leslie and S. J. Leslie, History of Highland Hospitals The Hospitals of Skye, 2011, Old Manse Books, Avoch, Scotland. Department of Health files at the National Records of Scotland, Minutes of the Northern Regional Hospital Board are at Highlands Archives in Inverness.

Davidson Hospital, Girvan

December 10, 2022May 3, 2023 / Harriet Richardson / 8 Comments

*Davidson Cottage Hospital, Girvan, photograph October 2022 © H. Richardson*

At the end of September my husband, Chris, and I took a trip to the south-west corner of Scotland, to the Rhins of Galloway. On the way there and on the way back we stopped off at various hospitals, including this one at Girvan, on the Ayrshire coast.

*General view of the hospital from The Avenue. Photographed October 2022 ©* H. Richardson

This small cottage hospital was designed by the Glasgow firm of architects Watson, Salmond and Gray and built in 1921-2. It was officially opened on 15 June 1922. Thomas Davidson founded and endowed the hospital as a memorial to his mother. The Builder described the style as ‘a free treatment of the Scottish domestic’ and noted that the roofs were slated with Tilberthwaite slates (silver grey). The builders were the local masons, Thomas Blair & Son, who fashioned the handsome Auchenheath stone. They worked with J. & D. Meikle, joiners; William Auld & Son, slater, and William Miller, plasterer, all from Ayr. Tile work was carried out by Robert Brown & Sons of Paisley and the plumbing was done by William Anderson, Ltd, Glasgow. [The Builder, 1 July 1921, p.10.]

*The main front of the hospital. It has been boarded up for about eight years. Photograph © H. Richardson*

When it was visited in the 1940s as part of the Scottish Hospitals Survey it was praised for its good condition. At that time it had 14 beds in two wards, and two single rooms available for maternity cases. It was mostly used for accident cases and work connected with the local medical practitioners. It had a fairly well-equipped operating theatres and good domestic offices.

*Detail of the main front. The inscription over the door reads ‘The Davidson Hospital’. Photograph © H. Richardson*

It is one of my favourite Scottish cottage hospitals, but it has been on the Register of Buildings at Risk since 2014. It has been replaced by a new Community Hospital on the outskirts of Girvan.

*This extension was added in 1971. An effort was made to respect the original building, being small, low, set back and with stone cladding.*

Plans to turn the building into an Enterprise Centre came to nothing. More recently an application was submitted for the conversion of the building into two dwellings. I do hope that the former hospital will be cherished by its new owners.

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