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 / 6 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.

*Rear of the building. The single storey wing probably contained the kitchens, but I have never seen the original plans of the building*

*Lovely matching wing to the rear of the main building, although it looks of a date with the original building, it must have been built after 1963 as it does not appear on the OS map of that date.*

*Large-scale OS map, surveyed 1963. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland (CC-BY) NLS*

First World War Auxiliary Hospitals

November 12, 2022May 3, 2023 / Harriet Richardson / 1 Comment

I recently had the pleasure of talking to Jackie Bird for the Love Scotland podcast, discussing the use of country houses during the First World War as auxiliary hospitals by the Red Cross. Two National Trust for Scotland properties had been used by the Scottish Red Cross: Leith Hall in Aberdeenshire and Pollok House, Glasgow.

*Pollok House, photographed in 2008 by <p&p>photo, from flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)*

In the first weeks of the war, the authorities were swamped with offers of private houses and other buildings for use as hospitals. Plans to provide emergency hospitals in the event of a war had been made by the Royal Army Medical Corps as early as 1907, the idea then was that a number of territorial force hospitals would be established in converted buildings, mostly schools, colleges or workhouses. That programme was rolled out at the beginning of the war, but had to expand as the conflict intensified taking over more schools and poor-law buildings. The numbers of wounded arriving in Britain rose dramatically over the winter of 1914 to 15.

Fourth Scottish General Hospital, nurse with four American soldiers: Lieut. John Martin, Chaplain Thomas E. Swan, Captain H. I. B. Rice and Lieut. W. W. Gillen, 1918, from American National Red Cross photograph collection

At the outbreak of the war the British Red Cross joined forces with the Order of St John of Jerusalem to set up a Joint War Committee. The Red Cross had secured buildings and equipment and were able to set up temporary hospitals as soon as wounded men began to arrive from abroad. They were staffed by Voluntary Aid Detachments.

*Oaklands Red Cross Hospital, Clevedon, Somerset, England, photograph taken following the signing of the Armistice on 11 November 1918 and made into a postcard*

The auxiliary hospitals were attached to central military hospitals – receiving patients from those hospitals after they had been treated. The men needed time to rest and recuperate before returning to the Front. By sending them out to these country house hospitals, beds were freed up for more serious cases in the central hospitals, while the domestic surroundings and access to gardens, were ideal to aid recovery.

*Leith Hall in Aberdeenshire is another of the country houses used by the Scottish Red Cross during the First World War. The gardens are in the care of the National Trust for Scotland.*

In Scotland there were between 160 and 180 auxiliary hospitals and just over a hundred of those were houses. Most were similar in size to Pollok house, although a few were larger – such as Hopetoun House, Glamis and Thirlestane Castle. Of course it was not necessarily the whole house that was used as a hospital. At Pollok house two of the main reception rooms were used: the dining room and the music room.

*Glamis Castle, photographed in 2008 by Rev Stan on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).*

Other buildings used as auxiliary hospitals were mostly community halls, but there were also some schools, and in Glasgow the headquarters building of the North British Locomotive Company at Springburn was one of the larger Red Cross hospitals with 400 beds.

*Hyde Park Ward, Springburn Red Cross Hospital, from Scottish Archives for Schools. (National Records of Scotland reference: BR/LIB(S) 5/63)*

Below is a list of auxiliary hospitals in use in Scotland during the First World War. They are divided into the three Red Cross districts covering the West of Scotland, East of Scotland and Northern Scotland. The list is adapted from the list on the Red Cross website, with information added from Gordon Barclay’s report on the built heritage of the First World War in Scotland.

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former Royal Alexandra Infirmary, Paisley revisited

September 26, 2021May 1, 2023 / Harriet Richardson / 5 Comments

The other day I was searching through boxes of old photographs and came across a bundle of colour negatives which turned out to be photographs that I had taken of the Royal Alexandra back in 1988. It would have been great to have had them when I wrote the blog post on the former Royal Alexandra Infirmary, Paisley back in December 2016, but better late than never! I would be the first to admit that the photos are for the most part pretty terrible, and scanning the negatives may not have improved them. However, I thought it would be worth sharing them in a new post.

*Paisley, Royal Alexandra Infirmary. Photographed in 1988 © H. Richardson*

The Royal Alexandra Infirmary was built between about 1894 and 1902, to designs by the architect T. G. Abercrombie. Above is a detail of the ends of two of the ward blocks with their semi-circular sun balconies. The square tower to the right housed the WCs and wash-hand basins. These ‘sanitary towers’ were typical adjuncts to the ends of Victorian hospital ward pavilions. Often there were a pair of towers with a simple balcony strung between them – as at St Thomas’s Hospital in London or the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh’s Lauriston Place buildings (now the Quartermile development).

The photographs above and below show the main east front the infirmary. You can just glimpse the balconies of two more ward pavilions behind on the top photograph, and on the right the circular ward tower. This main range has been converted into private flats, and re-named Alexandra Gate. Back in 1988 the hospital had not long closed. It was replaced by the new Royal Alexandra Hospital, off Craw Road to the south west. That was built roughly on the sites of the former Riccartsbar Hospital and the Craw Road Annexe.

Circular wards are very rare in Britain. There was a brief fashion for them around the turn of the 19th to the 20th centuries. I think the only other one built in Scotland was in Kirkcaldy at the old cottage hospital there – long since demolished. I have an old postcard that shows the hospital which you can find on the Fife page of this site. At the apex of the roof of the ward tower is a lantern or cupola that was part of the ventilation system. They feature along the ridge of the ward pavilions and atop the sanitary towers. It is not uncommon to find this kind of decorative treatment of a functional element, such as the ventilation system, in hospital architecture of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

I barely remember visiting the site – let alone having managed to get access to the interior, but here are two snaps of the interior of the circular ward. Rather gloomy I’m afraid, but hopefully you get an impression of what it was like.

You can see the rails from which the bed curtains would have been hung. That will have been a post-war addition. Originally the beds would not have had individual curtains. The idea of providing patients with privacy became much more important after the foundation of the National Health Service, when free hospital treatment became available to everyone. Previously charitable hospitals, or voluntary hospitals, such as the Royal Alexandra were designed to provide free treatment for the poor. Wealthy patients were either treated at home, in a private nursing home or a paying patients wing of a voluntary hospital. By the 1920s and 1930s different standards of hospital accommodation for the poor and the well off were common, sometimes even in the same institution.

*OS Map from 1967 showing the layout of the infirmary, with the nurses’ home to the north (marked N) and the Lodge on the east (L). National Library of Scotland Maps CC-BY (NLS)*

*Paisley, Royal Alexandra Infirmary, former Nurses’ Home. Photographed in 1988 © H. Richardson*

*The nurses’ home after conversion to flats photographed in 2013. *© Copyright Thomas Nugent and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence*.*

The Nurses’ Home was as grand as the hospital itself, with a rich array of decorative elements. It is Scottish Baronial in style, with turrets and crowstepped gables, although the tall chimneys, dormer windows and this broad arched entrance have some of the sinuous elegance that is typical of Glasgow’s late 19th and early 20th century buildings. This is particularly evident in the sculptural elements, such as the female head on the keystone over the entrance.

*Entrance to the Nurses’ Home, photographed in 1988*

The Nurses’ Home is one of the survivors on the site, having been converted into flats. It is named after Peter Coats, who had paid for its construction. Coats was one of the brothers that owned the great thread manufacturing company in Paisley; Peter managed the company’s finances. The nurses’ home was built before the hospital itself, and was opened 1896. There is an inscription round the archway which reads ‘They brought unto him sick people and he healed them’, and the two shields are carved with the thistle and the rose. The hospital replaced an earlier infirmary in the town, located near Bridge Street by the river, which had originated with a dispensary for the poor in the late 18th century.

*A view of the former nurses’ home from the south east, taken in 1988* © H. Richardson

*The nurses’ home after conversion, photographed in 2010 © Norrie Porter*

The two images above of nurses’ home show the transformation from abandoned and boarded up building to well-cared for flats. It is particularly good to see that the original small-paned glazing has been either kept or reproduced, and the tall chimneys preserved. .

*The entrance lodge to the hospital, photographed in 1988. ©* H. Richardson

*The Lodge photographed in 2010 © Norrie Porter*

The former entrance range to the infirmary has been converted for use as a nursery. It originally housed a dispensary and opened in 1902. The gate piers are very striking, the banded stonework picks up on the chunky banded pilasters flanking the gabled bays of the lodge. There is another fine stone gateway that used to lead in to the south of the infirmary site further down Neilston Road, that now gives pedestrian access to the flats that have been built there.

*Western ward pavilion of the infirmary, viewed from the east, photographed in 1988*. © H. Richardson

If you explore Google maps on street view for the old infirmary you can tour round most of the buildings, and really get a sense of how those that have not been converted into flats decayed between about 2011 and 2019, and obviously how much more ruinous it has become since the late 1980s.

*Entrance to the administration block on the north side of the infirmary, photographed in 1988*.© H. Richardson

Ugie Hospital

March 28, 2021May 1, 2023 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

Ugie Hospital was formerly the infectious diseases hospital for Peterhead. The foundation stone was laid by Provost Leash in June 1905 and the hospital opened in 1907. It was built on the standard plan with, at the centre, the two‑storey administration building of a very domestic character.

*Ugie Hospital, photographed in October 2020 © H. Blakeman*

Most of the original buildings survive, though now linked together by later infill. The old hospital building is of pink Peterhead granite enlivened by bull‑faced quoins and dressings, in a simple Tudor-Gothic style with mullioned windows and steep gables. It was designed by the Burgh Surveyor, T. H. Scott. The construction cost £4,000 and was helped along with a bequest of £1,500. In 1920 Peterhead Town Council built a small TB annexe and further additions in 1922.

*Extract from the 2nd edition OS map, revised in 1924. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland*

Before the Ugie Hospital was provided, a small hospital had been built in 1880. Prior to that, c.1865, a house at Roanheads had been used for a fever hospital, although it only provided two beds. (It may be that this was attached to the poorhouse, see the page for Aberdeenshire, Peterhead Parish Home.)

When I visited the site in October 2020, the hospital was closed and empty. Its future was being discussed in 2018-19, and it was subsequently declared surplus to requirements. In-patients were moved to Peterhead Community Hospital in November 2019. All remaining staff had been relocated out of the hospital by the end of last year.

[Sources: Aberdeen Evening Express

*Ugie Hospital, part of west ward block. Photographed in October 2020 © H. Blakeman*

*View from south-west, with the original ward wing to left and 1920s additions in foreground.*
*Photographed in October 2020 © H. Blakeman*

*Service block on the north side of the hospital. Photographed in October 2020 © H. Blakeman*

The hospital viewed from the north west. *Photographed in October 2020 © H. Blakeman*

Detail of one of the original ward blocks, showing the distinctive sanitary annexe. *Photographed in October 2020 © H. Blakeman*

*Detail of the western ward block, with ornamental iron rainwater heads*, and ventilation grills. *Photographed in October 2020 © H. Blakeman*

*View of the hospital from the west, trees bent by the prevailing winds.*
*Photographed in October 2020 © H. Blakeman*

*The rear wall of the hospital, showing its exposed site on the coast.*
*Photographed in October 2020 © H. Blakeman*.

To the rear of the hospital, mobile dental unit. *Photographed in October 2020 © H. Blakeman*

Inverurie Hospital, Aberdeenshire

January 12, 2021May 1, 2023 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

Administration Block, Inverurie Hospital. Photographed October 2020 © H. Blakeman

Inverurie lies to the north-west of Aberdeen. A small hospital for infectious diseases was built in the town in the 1890s to serve the Garioch district. The site and plans were approved by the Local Government Board for Scotland in 1894-5, and the hospital opened in January 1897 (see map below). It had cost about £2,000.

Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map, revised in 1899. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

The hospital was designed by Jenkins and Marr of Aberdeen, and comprised two separate sections in a single-storey and attic building. The smaller section contained two wards, which could be combined into one, with three beds each, and a small kitchen and lavatories. The larger section to the west had a large and a small ward, separated by folding doors, with seven and three beds respectively. The main kitchen, matron’s room, bathroom and staff bedrooms were also in this section of the building.

This hospital was replaced in the 1930s by a new and much larger hospital, for a time the old building was use as council offices. The Medical Officer of Health’s Report for 1936 noted that the original hospital had been recognised as structurally unsuitable for infectious cases for a long time, and that the County Council had decided to erect a new hospital near by with between 60 and 70 beds. A serious epidemic of scarlet fever and diphtheria had highlighted the shortage of beds in the county, and the need for an up-to-date hospital able to cope with diseases of epidemic proportions.

canmore_image_SC00976568-2 — Entrance to the hospital photographed in 2000, © Ian Shepherd, from RCAHMS

The site had been acquired and plans prepared in by the architect R. Leslie Rollo in consultation with the Medical Officer for Health. The plans were approved early in 1937. An article in The Scotsman headed ‘£50,000 Aberdeenshire Scheme’, records that the construction of the hospital was to be of cement blocks, which had been recommended to the architect as both brick and granite would be very much more expensive. However, when the tenders were submitted the cost came in at around £60,000, with another £13,000 needed for the land, furnishings, equipment and architects’ fees. A number of councillors objected to the high cost, arguing that it was a waste of public money. Various suggestions for economies were made, but the original plans seem to have been adhered to.

OS Map 1:1,250/1:2,500, surveyed/revised 1964 Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

Hailed as the most ambitious hospital scheme that Aberdeenshire had ever financed, the hospital was finally completed in December 1940. It was intended primarily to serve the suburban districts of Aberdeen, Garioch, Turriff, Ellon and Huntly. Provision was made for 60 beds, 20 in a cubicle block of two storeys and 40 in two single‑storey pavilions. These ward blocks were arranged around a square with the nurses’ home on the fourth side opposite the cubicle block.

View of the single-storey ward pavilion on the east side of the square. Photographed October 2020 © H. Blakeman

The single-storey ward pavilions were intended for scarlet fever and diphtheria cases and comprised wards of three and thirteen beds. The cubicle block could take doubtful cases or patients suffering from different diseases as each separate room or cubicle had just two beds (nine in all) – usually these had glazed partitions between them. The cubicle block had an operating theatre and treatment room attached.

View of the corresponding ward pavilion on the west side of the square. Photographed in October 2020 © H. Blakeman

There was also an administration block with kitchen, stores and dining‑rooms, located to the west of the wards and near the site entrance. This is a two-storey, T-plan building with large bow windows to the ground-floor rooms at either end of the main front, and a smart porch over the main entrance. The buildings were designed in the streamlined manner of the International Modern style, with wide bow windows, on the lines of Tait’s Hawkhead Hospital in Paisley.

The north elevation of the Nurses’ Home. Photographed in 2020 © H. Blakeman

The nurses’ home lies to the south of the wards, the main rooms enjoying a view south to a tennis court. Like the administration block, this has two bow windows to the outer ground-floor rooms, here leading out onto a terrace. There was accommodation for 46 staff, and training nurses had study room. Service buildings included a laundry and ambulance station, and boiler house to power the central heating system.

South elevation of the Nurses’ Home. Photographed in October 2020 © H. Blakeman

In 1958 Inverurie Hospital was adapted to maternity as well as general nursing cases. It had by then become part of the National Health Service and was part of the North Eastern Regional Hospital Board, based at Aberdeen. With the introduction of antibiotics the need for infectious diseases hospitals had greatly diminished, but there had been a rise in demand for maternity accommodation. An ageing population also created a shortage of beds for geriatric patients, and many of the smaller isolation hospitals became geriatric units. Inverurie was to provide 30 maternity beds, the rest for ordinary medical beds and some for the elderly.

Later developments at the site included a standard plan 30‑bed ward unit, which opened in 1982. Plans for a major redevelopment were made in the early 1990s, intended to provide a geriatric unit, day hospital and facilities for occupational therapy and physiotherapy. These eventually seem to have been abandoned. More recently a new ‘Integrated Health Care HUB’ has been built, and the 1980s building demolished. The hub was the first phase in a projected larger scheme. It occupies the site of the cubicle isolation block and was designed by Mackie Ramsay Taylor Architects. Their brief was to provide for General Medical Practice, including minor injuries, a Community Midwifery Unit, Dental Suite, and various out-patient clinics. Plans were finalised in about 2015.

View of the back of the admin block with one of the local residents in the foreground. © H. Blakeman

With grateful thanks to my former colleague at the Survey of London, Sarah Milne’s grandmother, Elsie Cartney, a former nurse, who very kindly gave me a copy of the excellent history of the Inverurie hospitals produced by many of the people who worked there and published in 2004.

Sources: Grampian Health Board Archives, minutes of county council health committee: A History of Inverurie Hospitals, 2004: Ian Shepherd, Aberdeenshire: Donside and Strathbogie – An Illustrated Architectural Guide, 2006: The Hospital, 3 April 1897, p.18: Medical Officer for Health for Aberdeenshire, Annual Report 1936; Scotsman, 30 Jan 1937, p.14; 30 Oct 1937, p.17: Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 23 Nov 1939, p.4: Aberdeen P&J, 11 Dec 1940: Scottish Hospitals Survey, Report for the North Eastern Region, 1946: Aberdeen Evening Express, 6 Nov 1958, p.9: Aberdeen P&J 8 Feb 1991, p.33

The Falkirk Ward

March 1, 2020February 26, 2023 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

The Falkirk Ward was designed by the Department of Health for Scotland in the 1960s. It was an experimental ward, a prototype to be tested for its efficiency and flexibility. If successful, it was to be rolled out in the new district general hospitals planned to be built across Scotland as promised by the Hospital Plan of 1962. In the 1990s it was selected by DoCoMoMo as one of Scotland’s key 20th Century Modern architectural monuments. It was one of 60 post-war buildings which were deemed to be of particular significance in terms of their design or style.

*Looking towards the Falkirk Ward Unit from the south, photographed in 1991* © RCAHMS

The ward block was erected at the existing Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary. The Infirmary had been built in 1926-31 to replace an older cottage hospital and was officially opened by Prince George, later Duke of Kent, in January 1932. It had been designed in a sparse Neo‑Georgian style by the local architect, W. J. Gibson, with advice from Dr D. J. Mackintosh, Medical Superintendent of Glasgow’s Western Infirmary. Mackintosh was an inveterate giver of advice to hospital boards of management, and author of Construction Equipment and Management of a General Hospital published in 1916. The architect, William Gibson, had a family connection with the infirmary as his mother, Harriette Hicks Gibson, had been the main force behind the foundation of the original cottage hospital. His father, John Edward Gibson, was managing partner of the Camelon Ironworks in Falkirk.

Falkirk Royal Infirmary, *photographed by in 2008. These buildings were demolished some time after 2010. © Copyright John Lord*

Funds were raised to add a nurses’ home in the late 1930s and a competition held for the design, limited to architects practising in Scotland. First prize went to the firm of Rowand Anderson, Paul & Partners, Stuart R. Matthew came second and a local firm, T. M. Copland & Blakey were placed third by the assessor, C. G. Soutar. [AJ, 22 Dec 1938, p.1013.] The outbreak of the Second World War resulted in the plans being postponed and eventually abandoned, instead nine Emergency Medical Scheme huts were built on the site (a further two were added later).

O.S. 1:1250 Map, Surveyed in 1951, showing the 1920s-30s infirmary at the top/north side of the site, and the EMS hutted annexe to the south. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.

Falkirk Infirmary was one of eleven institutions in Scotland selected by the Department of Health for hutted annexes to provide for the anticipated air-raid casualties. The eleven sites comprised four local authority hospitals (Robroyston, and Mearnskirk, in Glasgow; Hairmyres, Lanarkshire; and Ashludie, Dundee) four voluntary hospitals (Astley Ainslie, Edinburgh; Victoria Infirmary Auxiliary Hospital, Busby, Glasgow; Falkirk Royal Infirmary; and Stirling Royal Infirmary), and three mental hospitals (Gartloch, Glasgow; Bangour, Edinburgh; and Larbert). The huts, measuring around 144ft by 24ft, were each to contain 36 beds, and were to be built and maintained by the Office of Works. [The Lancet, 22 April 1939, p.943.]

*Extract from the OS Air Photo Mosaics, 1944-50. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland*

The executive architects of the Falkirk Ward who worked in conjunction with the Scottish Home and Health Department and Western Regional Hospital Board were Keppie Henderson and Partners. The design was drawn up by the Hospital Planning Group of the Scottish Home and Health Department, comprising two architects – John Ogilvie and Mr Bruce, Dr Hunter and Miss McNaught on the medical and work-study side, Mr Rendle for administrative expertise, and Mr. Wotherspoon, engineer. Plans were finalised in October 1962 and work began in the following year. The new unit was officially opened by Bruce Millan M.P., Under Secretary of State for Scotland, on 4 November 1966, although one of the wards was brought into use towards the end of 1965. Patients were moved into it from two overcrowded wards in the old hospital. One of the consultant surgeons, Mr R. G. Main, noted that the old hospital’s surgical unit (which the new block replaced) had 65 beds consisting of one male ward and one female ward, but they sometimes added in as many as ten extra beds in the middle of each ward in order to cope with the waiting list. He recalled how ‘A ward round could be likened to a stroll through Glasgow Central Station on Fair Saturday!’ [SHHD, Hospital Design in Use 4 The Falkirk Ward, Edinburgh, HMSO 1969, p.39.]

*The Falkirk Ward Unit, photographed in 1991* © RCAHMS

The Falkirk ward was developed in order to provide greater ‘privacy, amenity and better facilities for caring for patients and so set standards for National Health Service hospitals which might be generally acceptable for many years to come’. [The Hospital, Feb 1968, p.65.] It was an experiment in design incorporating several features which were being contemplated or proposed for new hospitals but had not yet been tried out in Britain. It was a complete departure from the standard Nightingale ward, and involved a move towards much smaller ward units. It was not considered viable to provide only single and double rooms which were by then current in American hospitals. This would have created too many operational and staffing difficulties and greatly increased the running costs. For these reasons a combination of four‑bed wards and single rooms was selected, with a ward floor of 60 beds, including twelve for intensive care.

*Falkirk Ward Unit, First-floor, reception* © RCAHMS

In addition to the experimental ward block, a two-storey service building was constructed as part of a general scheme of reconstruction at the infirmary. This addition provided kitchen, staff dining-room, pharmacy and central stores, and was also completed in 1965. In that year work began to design a new out-patients’ department. This, too, was designed by members of the Hospital Planning Committee of the Scottish Home and Health Department. The team in this instance comprised one of the few female architects employed by the NHS in Scotland in the 1960s, M. Justin Blanco White, Dr Hunter and Miss McNaught were the medical advisers and Mr Rendle the administrative adviser.

*Interior of the Falkirk Ward, with the nurses’ station on the left. Photographed in 1991. © RCAHMS*

The new out-patients’ department was intended to be a demonstration building embodying the principles behind the Department’s Planning Note (the guidelines which were to be followed throughout the country for new out-patient departments). It was part of the wider strategy of devising standard hospital departments. In the mid-1960s the Department thought that the advantages of standardisation of departments would be increased if a standardised system of building and the use of common structural components were adopted. The model plan of the Falkirk out-patients’ department was also designed to illustrate the recommendations for A&E departments, especially regarding standard rooms for both diagnosis and treatment of either new or returning patients ‘walking, in wheel chairs or on a trolley’. They were also trialling a short-stay ward and operating theatre shared between out-patients and A&E.

Design work on the out-patients’ department continued through 1966-9. In 1969, with the plans nearing completion, work began to clear the site for the new department. Construction began in 1970, and the department was completed in 1972, having cost £881,000. It was equipped and furnished ready for use the following year.

With the reorganisation of the National Health Service in 1974, the running of Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary passed from the Western Regional Hospitals Board to the newly established Forth Valley Health Board. One of the first schemes undertaken by the new Health Board was the upgrading of the war-time hospital huts, completed in 1976.

*Windsor Unit, built in 1984-6. Photographed in 2008. © Tom Sargent (cc-by-sa/2.0)*

The next major development took place in the 1980s with the addition of the Windsor Unit. This project was approved in 1979 and was intended to provide 176 maternity and geriatric beds. Work began in April 1984, on the scheme estimated to cost £8.7m and was scheduled for completion in 1986. The three storey block was very much of its time, the design made effective use of contrasting colours and materials, with the rich brown brick threaded with orange-red brick stripes. Despite being of relatively recent date, the unit had been decommissioned by October 2010, after the opening of Forth Valley Hospital, and was subsequently demolished.

Randolph Wemyss Memorial Hospital, Fife

November 30, 2019May 1, 2023 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

*Randolph Wemyss Memorial Hospital, photographed in October 2019 © H. Richardson*

The cottage hospital at Buckhaven opened on 28 August 1909. It was designed by Alexander Tod of Kirkcaldy for Lady Eva Wemyss in memory of her husband, Randolph Gordon Erskine Wemyss, of Wemyss Castle. Randolph Wemyss had died in July 1908 aged just 50 after a long illness, but in his relatively short life he had made a considerable impact on the Wemyss estate, guided and inspired by his mother. He invested the profits from the coal mines on his land both to improve production – building a coaling dock at Methil, and a railway from there to Thornton – and also to improve the conditions of his tenants and workers. He was behind the development of the ‘New Town’ or ‘Garden Village’ of Denbeath, where he built over 200 cottage flats in 1904-5, and invested in the company that built a tramway from Kirkcaldy to Leven.

*OS Map, 25-inch, revised in 1913. The Wemyss Memorial Hospital is here dwarfed by Denbeath School to its north-west. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.*

The housing built by Wemyss at Denbeath was remarkable in many ways. The design of the cottage flats was unusual. Arranged in terraces of two storeys, with one flat per floor, the L-shaped flats interlocked with their entrances alternately on the north and south sides. The upper-floor flats were accessed by external stairs. They were also unusually large, giving a larger square footage of floor area than was recommended by the 1919 Housing Act, and built on a low density at 10 houses per acre, yet the rents kept affordable. [see John Frew and David Adshead’s article, ‘”Model” Colliery Housing in Fife: Denbeath “Garden” Village 1904-8’ in Scottish Industrial History, X (1987) pp 45-59 for more on the housing.]

*Wellesley Road. Detail of the cottage flats in Denbeath, photographed by Jerzy Morkis in 2010, © CC BY-SA 2.0, reproduced from Geograph*

Designs for a cottage hospital to serve the new garden village may have been outlined around 1907 by Randolph Wemyss and Alexander Tod, the Wemyss Castle estate architect. However, they were seen through by Lady Eva Wemyss, with Tod, following her husband’s death. Lady Eva was Randolph’s second wife (he had been divorced from his first wife in 1898), and the daughter of William Henry Wellesley, 2nd Earl Cowley, a great nephew of the Duke of Wellington. Both Lady Eva and Alexander Tod were said to have visited ‘some of the principal hospitals in the country’ before settling on the design, which embodied the ‘best features found in all of them’. [Dundee Courier, 31 March 1909, p.6]

*Detail of ward wing, photographed in October 2019 © H. Richardson*

In March 1909 Lady Eva Wemyss laid the foundation stone, placing a sealed glass jar containing current coins and copies of the daily newspapers in a cavity on top of which the foundation stone was lowered into place. Building work proceeded rapidly, and at the end of August 1909 the hospital was officially opened by Lady Eva, the ceremony being presided over by Charles Carlow, the manager of the Fife Coal company. Carlow gifted the four-dial clock, which originally had Westminster chimes, and had the novel design of hands representing the miner’s pick and shovel.

*Detail of the central tower. The hands of the clock are in the shape of picks and shovels. Photographed in October 2019 © H. Richardson*

The plan is of the standard central administration block flanked by ward blocks favoured at the time but it is dressed up with baronial details. Described as picturesque in the contemporary accounts in the local newspapers, the building has undoubted charm. Originally the harling was yellow, or ochre coloured rather than white. There are circular stair turrets and corbelled bartizans at the angles of the wards. The somewhat eccentric entrance has a Doric portico fronting a circular tower, topped with a conical roof sporting the gabled clock faces.

*Detail of the entrance to the Randolph Wemyss Memorial Hospital, with the coat-of-arms of the Wemyss family carved in red sandstone in the pediment. Photographed in October 2019 © H. Richardson*

To the rear were the kitchen and laundry, with the ‘latest appliances for mechanical ironing of linen’, and at the east end of the site a small chapel and mortuary. Originally there were wrought-iron gates ‘of mediaeval design, with side railings of wrought iron’ – now long disappeared’

*Rear of the hospital, showing the kitchen, laundry and boiler house, photographed in October 2019 © H. Richardson*

The hospital was designed as a surgical hospital – accidents in the coal mines were not infrequent – and contained two main wards with six or seven beds in each, an emergency ward with two beds, operating theatre, X-ray room, doctor’s room, as well as accommodation for the matron and nurses and the usual stores and offices. Three ‘up-to-date’ bathrooms were installed, including, an ‘electric bath’. It was to be lit by electricity, and heated by hot-water pipes and open fires.

*Design for entrance hall floor, dated April 1909.* © RCAHMS

Some of the original plans have were deposited in the National Monuments Record of Scotland (now part of Historic Environment Scotland), including a design for the entrance hall floor. It features the Wemyss family crest of a swan at the centre.

*The Chapel and mortuary, photographed in October 2019 © H. Richardson*

The grounds were laid out and planted with flowers and shrubs by the head gardener of Wemyss Castle, Charles Simpson. Originally the front of the hospital looked directly out over the Forth, but housing has since been built opposite. Along with the view, the hospital has lost a few of its original features – weather vanes formerly topped the turrets, a swan in the centre, a working miner with lamp and tools and a ship and colliery winding engine on the side turrets. On the whole, though, the building is little altered, except internally largely the result of a sizeable addition to the west built in the 1960s as a geriatric unit added by the South East Regional Hospital Board in the face of a pressing need for additional beds for the elderly in Fife.

*Geriatric Unit, from the south, photographed in October 2019 © H. Richardson*

An extension of the hospital was first mooted late in 1954. At that stage it was hoped to add an out-patient and physiotherapy department. At much the same time the South East Regional Hospital Board had been considering its strategy for hospital provision for the ageing population, specifically in Fife. Early in 1955 sketch plans were drawn up, at this stage for a 44-bed unit with some physiotherapy and out-patient accommodation. Little progress having been made, in January 1957 the Regional Board appointed Dr Robert Rankine to develop and take charge of a hospital geriatric service for the county. He produced a report in April endorsing the proposals to expand the Randolph Wemyss hospital. At this stage, however, there was no prospect of funds being available for such a building before 1960. In February 1959 the Regional Board approved the acquisition of additional land to the west of the hospital for a new building and the construction of a 60-bed geriatric unit, with limited facilities for physiotherapy, at an estimated cost of £120,000. [Fife Archives, H/EF/1/10-11, East Fife Hospital Board of Management Minutes.]

*Geriatric Unit, from the west, photographed in October 2019 © H. Richardson*

The new unit was built in 1962-3 and officially opened early in 1964. The architect in charge was Iain D. Haig, one of the team in the Regional Board’s architects department headed by John Holt. Although in marked contrast to the original hospital, its stylish design and respectful distance from the older building ensures that each can be equally appreciated. (Personally, I think they are both very handsome – in different ways.) Rather like the slightly earlier Phase One buildings at the Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, the geriatric unit blends modernism, in its construction and the concrete fins that form the building’s most distinctive feature, with elements of traditional Scottish vernacular building traditions, in the use of random-rubble stone as a facing on the ground storey.

*Geriatric Unit, showing the low link-building, photographed in October 2019 © H. Richardson*

The new range was designed with a reinforced concrete frame, aluminium sliding sash windows (since replaced), a central spine beam supporting floors and roof, and close-centred perimeter columns of precast concrete designed as projecting fins to create ‘sun baffles’ for the ward areas. Wards were on the upper two floors, designed on an adaptation of the Nuffield type with the bed bays on one side of a service corridor, and ancillary rooms, plus single-bed rooms, on the other.

*Geriatric Unit, view towards entrance on west front, photographed in October 2019 © H. Richardson*

Each of the two ward floors accommodated thirty patients arranged in two nursing units per floor of sixteen and fourteen beds, with four 6-bed bays, one 3-bed bay and three single rooms. Nurses stations were in the service corridor area placed centrally between the 6-bed bays and with the single rooms close by. Glazed screens divided the bed bays to maintain a clear view for the nursing staff. A day room was placed at the centre, between the two 6-bed bays, and a passageway ran along the south-west side beside the windows, fitted with a handrail to assist ambulant patients to exercise, out of the way of the main circulation corridor on the other side of the wards. Perhaps in an echo of the original entrance hall floor, there was a patterned vinyl-tile floor, supplied by Nairn’s of Kirkcaldy in the new wing. The original colour scheme throughout was grey and white, with accents of stronger colour. [The Hospital, May 1965, pp.229-30]

In 2008 the hospital was re-opened by Nicola Sturgeon after modernisation. It currently operates as a community hospital run by NHS Fife, with various out-patient clinics, and the geriatric unit (now the Wellesley Unit) providing in-patient palliative and continuing care.

Victoria Hospital, Fife

November 3, 2019May 1, 2023 / Harriet Richardson / 2 Comments

*Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, photographed October 2019. Looking north towards the 1960s tower block with the new ward block to the right. © H. Richardson*

Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, and Queen Margaret’s Hospital, Dunfermline, are the two main hospitals in Fife, serving the eastern and western halves of this large county. They both comprise buildings that mark significant periods in the history of post-war hospital architecture, and the Victoria has some of the earliest surviving NHS buildings in Scotland. The site is now dominated by a large, 500-bed ward block built in 2009-12 by Balfour Beatty to designs by Building Design Partnership.

The maternity wing of the new building. Colour and texture, as well as contrasting forms and asymmetry, break up and humanise the large bulk of the most recent development on the site. Photographed in 2019, © H. Richardson

As yet little studied, I have recently been looking into the development of the hospital during the 1950s and 60s, delving into the Department of Health for Scotland files, and the records of the East Fife Hospitals Board of Management. But the story begins long before the National Health Service, and at least one remnant survives of the earliest phase of this hospital.

*One of the original buildings of the Kirkcaldy Burgh fever hospital, dating from 1897 with some later additions and alterations.*

Although not the most architecturally exciting of buildings, at the heart of the modest brick-built building pictured above is an 1890s ward block, part of the original burgh fever hospital. This was built as a scarlet fever ward. There was a larger ward block to its west that was intended for typhoid patients in one half of the building, and diphtheria patients in the other. Between these two was an administration block which also housed some staff accommodation, and there was a laundry and disinfector, mortuary, and gate lodge on the site. Plans for the hospital had been drawn up by the Glasgow architects, Campbell Douglas & Morrison in 1897 to provide accommodation for 33 patients in all.

This map shows the extent of the hospital just prior to the First World War, the surviving ward block is the rectangular building towards the right hand side of the group. Extract from the 2nd edition OS map, revised in 1913, reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.

The fever hospital was extended in 1908, with a sanatorium pavilion for tuberculosis patients (on the site of the present hospice, and possibly partly incorporated in the present building). Further additions were made in 1930 with another sanatorium building and a cubicle isolation block. By the 1940s the hospital had 124 beds, but by then the buildings were not considered up to modern standards. In the run up to the establishment of the National Health Service the plan was to use nearby Cameron Hospital for infectious diseases, and to convert the Victoria into accommodation for the aged and infirm. Cameron Hospital had been considerably extended in the 1930s, its relatively modern buildings and large open site offered the potential to develop a new general hospital there.

*Aerial photograph of Cameron Hospital, Windygates, Fife, taken in 1954. © Crown Copyright: HES*

Difficulties over the acquisition of the additional land required adjacent to Cameron Hospital caused considerable delays. This, together with the time consuming bureaucracy of the new health service, followed by drastic cuts in central funding for new building, lead eventually to the abandonment of the Cameron Hospital scheme in about 1958. In the mean time, a new surgical ward block and other additions had been planned at the Victoria Hospital, with a view to addressing the serious shortage of beds across Fife generally. Work on this extension was nearing completion when the Cameron plan was given up, and the decision taken to build a second, larger block at Kirkcaldy. The 1950s extension therefore became known as phase one, the 1960s development phase two. The contrast in style and planning between these two phases indicates how post-war hospital architecture was developing apace at this time. Both phases are rare survivals of a key moment, demonstrating the evolution of modernist architecture as well as of hospital planning.

Phase I

Preliminary plans for a 100-bed surgical unit at the Victoria site were on the drawing board of the architects’ department of the South East Regional Hospital Board in 1953. By October 1954 they had been broadly approved by the Department of Health and had been submitted to the East Fife Hospitals Board of Management based at Kirkcaldy for their consideration. John Holt, the Regional Board’s chief architect, attended meetings with the local Board of Management to explain the rationale behind the designs.

*View of phases one and two from the south east, photographed in October 2019, © H. Richardson*

The footprint of the ward block adhered to pre-war pavilion planning in its arrangement, if not its internal layout, comprising a three-storey T-plan building divided into three ward wings with the main entrance hall and stair at their meeting point. A single storey range on the north side contained the main out-patients’ department, and another at north-west corner housed a chest clinic. The entire building is flat-roofed, steel framed, and faced in buff-coloured brick and glass curtain walling. The flat roof of the north-east wing had a solarium and roof garden, its reinforced concrete pergola remains a distinctive feature of the building. Roof terraces and solaria were more common in the interwar period, and even then roof gardens were a rare feature in a Scottish hospital.

*View of the north side of Phase I, with the ward tower of Phase II looming behind*

Inside, clinics, offices and the children’s ward were on the ground floor, wards and accommodation for medical staff on the first floor, and further wards and twin operating theatres on the second floor. According to Holt, ward planning was based ‘on the continental practice’ of having wards sited on one side of a central corridor and ancillary rooms on the other. This was known as the Rigs model (referring to the Rigs Hospital, Copenhagen), and was also the basis of the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust’s widely publicised experimental ward built at Greenock in the early 50s.

Detail of the north-east wing, north elevation, the upper two floors treated with glass curtain walling comprising strips of windows over opaque blue glass panels, the cross walls creating a vertical accent carrying up from the pilotis. A tangle of ventilators and air-conditioning units are an inevitable modern addition, muddying the clean lines of the wing. Originally air-conditioning was only provided in the operating theatres. Photographed October 2019, © H. Richardson

Unusually, the operating theatres faced south. This met with surprise from the Board of Management committee, as it was traditional for theatres to be on the north side to benefit from even northern light. Holt explained that the trend was now against providing large theatre windows, rendering their position unimportant, and the theatres here would be air-conditioned, combatting heat from direct sunlight and providing effective bacteriological control.

When work on the surgical block was nearing completion in 1959, it was discovered that the ward doorways were too narrow to allow beds to be wheeled through easily. The standard hospital bed, without mattress, sheets and blankets, was 36 inches wide, and the new ward doorways were fractionally under 40 inches wide. Various suggestions were made for easing the beds through the doorways, but widening them was dismissed as too costly. Metal strips were proposed to be added to the door frames to protect the woodwork, narrower beds were rejected, but narrower mattresses would be used. The matter was also to be ‘kept in mind’ when plans were drawn up for the phase two ward block.

Nurses’ Home, Hayfield House

*Hayfield House, the nurses’ home, north and west elevations, photographed in October 2019, © H. Richardson.*

The nurses’ home, now Hayfield House, has some more overtly modernist features: its upper floors resting on slender pilotis, originally with an open space in the centre. It was constructed in a novel way, using a method that until that time was only used on tall silos. The concrete frame of the building was constructed from shuttered concrete made using continuously sliding forms operated by hydraulic jacks. The timber forms were constructed in situ on the first floor, and given a slight batter to ensure that they were self-clearing. Work was carried out continuously for four days, with 54 men on the day shift and 51 on the night shift. This experimental construction method was recommended by the consultant engineers, Blyth and Blyth, because of the ground conditions. The presence of historic mine workings favoured a concrete frame, being lighter than steel, particularly for a building of this height. Nevertheless, the modernist aesthetic was tempered by the warm tones of the brick facing, pale blue tiles and random-rubble stonework at the entrance.

*Entrance to Hayfield House, with section of rubble-stone wall facing to the right. Photographed in October 2019, © H. Richardson*

Phase II

In 1958 the Department of Health approved a second extension at the Victoria Hospital. Trial borings had to be made on the site once more, to check for underground mine workings, but as soon as the site was deemed suitable detailed planning was begun in the hopes that building work might start in 1961. The architect in charge of phase two was Eric Dalgleish Davidson, who had taken over from Walter Scott on phase one when Scott had left to set up in private practice late in 1957.

A model of phase two was made in 1962, and plans had been finalised by November that year. The annual report of the Scottish Home and Health Department recorded that the second extension to the Victoria was in progress at the end of the year. Officially opened in 1967, phase two is in marked contrast to phase one in style and scale: high rise rather than low rise, uncompromisingly modernist, and adopting a deeper, double-corridor ward plan.

*Architect’s model of Phase II, reproduced from the* Architectural Review, *June 1965* *where it was used in an advertisement for Stramax radiant heating and acoustic tiles.*

An eleven-storey tower sits atop a two-storey podium – in the matchbox-on-a-muffin manner, demonstrated clearly in the model pictured above. The extension housed twice the number of beds as phase one (240), three operating theatres, a new out-patients’ department, A&E, X-ray, sterile supply, physiotherapy and occupational therapy departments, as well as a conference hall, and libraries for patients and medical staff. Eight ward units, each with 30 beds, were located in the tower; the beds were mostly in four-bedded bays, supplemented by single rooms. Various labour-saving devices were introduced making the most of technical innovations.

*View of Phase II from the west. The section with the pitch-roof is the lecture theatre. Photographed in October 2019, © H. Richardson*

In addition to the main ward tower, some of the phase one buildings were extended to meet the demands of the large increase in patients and staff. The kitchen and dining-room building was one that had to be enlarged, but the Board of Management’s hopes for greatly expanded staff recreation facilities (including a swimming pool) proved too expensive.

This view shows a part of the staff kitchen and dining room block on the left – which overlooked the Den burn valley. The Nurses’ Home is behind in the middle distance. The stair tower on the left of the home was added following the tragic and fatal fire which broke out in the home in 1981. Photographed October 2019, © H. Richardson

With the shift from Cameron Hospital to the Victoria as the new general hospital for East Fife, the central laboratory which had been established at Cameron was now in the wrong place. A new laboratory was therefore included in the phase two scheme. Different in style again from either phase one or the ward tower, this distinctly industrial-looking building occupies the north-east corner of the site. The laboratory is square in plan, arranged around an internal courtyard.

*Victoria Hospital, Central Laboratory. Part of the Phase II extension 1962-7. Photographed in October 2019, © H. Richardson*

The phase two extension of the Victoria Hospital is particularly significant in Scottish hospital history because of the involvement of Eric Davidson in its design. Whilst it is difficult to ascribe a single designer to the phase two buildings, Davidson was the architect in charge. In 1960 he had been made Assistant Regional Architect to the South Eastern Regional Hospital Board and also Chairman of the Scottish Hospitals Study Group (1960-4). Following the re-organisation of the NHS in 1974 he became Assistant Director and Chief Architect of the Scottish Health Service Building Division (from 1974 until he retired in 1989). John Holt, likewise, is a key figure in the earlier decades of Scottish hospital design. As the chief architect to the Regional Board, he headed up a department that designed many remarkable buildings extending from hospitals in the Borders, across the Lothians and into Fife.

*The ward tower of the Victoria Hospital, photographed in 2011, with work underway on the new wing to the right.* © *Copyright John Taylor and licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0*

In the more recent additions to the Victoria Hospital, major architects or architectural firms are also present, with Building Design Partnership for the newest development (completed 2012) and Zaha Hadid for the Maggie’s Centre (2006). Each phase, from the 1890s onwards, encapsulates in built form the ideas, hopes and aspirations of the different times in which they were designed.

*Victoria Hospital new wing, photographed in 2016. © Copyright John Taylor and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence*

The view above looks south across the double-curved front of the new wing, with its paired entrances sheltered by distinctive, up-turned, curved canopies. The nearer entrance leads to the out-patients’ department and main wards, the farther entrance to the maternity wing. Just visible on the right is the corner of the diminutive Maggie’s Centre.

*Zaha Hadid’s Maggie’s Centre, with the tower of phase II behind to the right. Photographed in October 2019, © H. Richardson*

Sources

National Records of Scotland, Department of Health files: Fife Archives, East Fife Hospitals Board of Management, Minutes; Plans, DG/K/5/121: Department of Health for Scotland, Scottish Hospitals Survey, Report on the South-Eastern Region, 1946: PP, Scottish Home and Health Department, Annual Report for 1967, p.76: The Hospital, Jan. 1960 p.67; December 1960, pp 995-1004; Jan. 1961, p.54; July 1961, p.474; May 1962, pp 303-4; March 1964, p.163; Sept 1967, p.353: AJ, 22 Nov 1956, pp 746-7: Urban Realm, 24 Aug 2012.

Two Highland Hospitals: Ross Memorial, Dingwall and Nicolson Mackenzie, Strathpeffer

September 29, 2019November 2, 2021 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

Only a few miles apart, there are two small hospital buildings both designed by W. C. Joass. Both hospitals are particularly fine examples of Victorian cottage hospital architecture in Scotland, typical of the diminutive scale of the earliest hospitals of this type.

W. C. Joass was the father of one of the great London Scots architects J. J. Joass. William Cumming Joass was born in Inverness in 1833. He may perhaps have trained with Alexander Ross, as he was later taken into partnership by him and placed in charge of the Dingwall office. From 1865 Joass was practising on his own account there. Most of his work was in the Highlands, much of it domestic or farm buildings, but also quite a few churches, some schools – notably during the 1870s, and police stations in the late 1880s and 90s (four of these were on the island of Lewis). In the year that he became a partner of Alexander Ross the poorhouse on Skye was one of the projects in hand, but the first hospital that Joass designed was the Ross Memorial in Dingwall.

*Front elevation of the Ross Memorial Hospital, photographed in August 2019, © H. Richardson*

Still functioning today, this hospital opened in 1873 as a memorial to Dr William Ross who died in 1869. Joass was also the architect for additions to the hospital carried out around 1879. That year he was also engaged to design the Spa Pavilion at Strathpeffer, having earlier designed two hotels in the small Spa town, the the Strathpeffer and the Ben Wyvis.

The 1st edition OS map, surveyed soon after the hospital was built in 1873, shows the isolated position of the hospital, well east of the town centre. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

The Ross Memorial treated both medical and surgical cases, and, if need arose, could accommodate infectious cases, due to the way in which it was designed with effective separation between the wards. Joass was advised by the local medical practitioner, Dr Bruce, as well as drawing on Florence Nightingale’s Notes on Hospitals. The medical and surgical sections were designed to function independently, minimising the risks of cross infection. Each comprised two small wards (with just two beds apiece), with their own kitchen, wash-room and WCs. The nurse’s room was placed between the wards, with inspection windows through which she could view the patients.

*Plan, elevations and sections of the Ross Memorial Hospital, reproduced from H. C. Burdett,* Cottage Hospitals: General, Fever, and Convalescent: Their Progress, Management and Work…, *London, 1880 p. 274*

Henry C. Burdett, the great social reformer and chronicler of hospital design in the late-nineteenth century, commended Joass’s plan in his book, Cottage Hospitals, published in 1880: ‘as, with the exception of the ventilation of the WCs, which should in all cases be entered by a lobby with cross ventilation, so that the escape of sewer gas into the passages may be avoided, we consider the arrangements very good indeed.’ Burdett’s description of the hospital suggests that in the short time since it opened it had adapted to suit local needs and was treating surgical and accident cases on one side of the building, and infectious diseases on the other.

*Old postcard of the Ross Memorial Hospital. © H. Richardson*

The Inverness Courier, reporting on the opening of the hospital, found no fault with the building: ‘everything about the hospital is so arranged as to prevent the absorption of any poisonous matter’. The floors were ‘saturated with solid paraffin’, and non-absorbent matting used. The main decorative element seems to have been a set of engravings given by Lady Walden to cheer the rooms. An unusual detail given in the newspaper regarded the operating table, made of pitch pine donated by the owner of one of Inverness’s sawmills, Mr Walker. The table was made by Mr Lewis Macdonald, carpenter, but intriguingly, the legs were turned ‘by an amateur’.

*OS 2nd edition of the 25-inch map, revised in 1904, shows the various additions to the hospital to this date. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.*

The David Ross lodge, at the entrance to the hospital, was built in 1895-6 as a memorial to the Provost David Ross by the Wester Ross Farmers’ Club. In 1909 a new isolation hospital was built, with six wards, kitchens, nurses’ accommodation, bathrooms and ‘special pan cleaning apparatus’ (this may be the block to the west of the main building – later used as a nurses’ home). It also had a veranda for the open-air treatment of patients suffering from tuberculosis. Further additions were made in 1938 by the local architects Mackenzie and MacDonald and X-ray apparatus was installed, gifted by William Peterkin, a well-know shorthorn breeder. Peterkin later gave £3,000 to build and furnish a maternity home on the site. This gift was announced mid-December in 1944, and only a week later he died suddenly (though he was 87 years old). When the new wing was opened in July 1946 it was named the William Peterkin Maternity Home in his honour. The ‘home’ provided 16 beds, varying from one-bedded to four-bedded, and a labour room. During that year around 200 babies were born in the hospital – the only such facility in the county of Ross-shire.

*The large-scale OS map of 1964 shows the new out-patient department to the rear of the hospital. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.*

Two years after the Maternity Home opened, the hospital passed to the Secretary of State for Scotland under the National Health Service. The change had not been welcomed by the Chairman of the managers, W. R. T. Middleton.

*Outpatients’ Department, photographed in August 2019 © H. Richardson*

Under the NHS a new out-patient department was built which opened in 1962. This was followed by new maternity and physiotherapy units in 1966. The design of the out-patient department was based on the standard plan devised within the Department of Health for Scotland, a copy of which was supplied in advance of publication to the Northern Regional Hospital Board. D. Polson Hall, the Architect to the Board, had to adapt the plan in order to provide additional space for orthodontics and eye specialities. Double-glazing was another modification, not unreasonably for a hospital in the Highlands. The standard plan was also applied to the out-patients’ departments at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, and the Lawson Memorial Hospital, Golspie, built around the same time.

*View of the rear of the hospital, with the boiler house chimney to the right. Photographed in August 2019, © H. Richardson*

The maternity unit contained 16 beds and labour suites, and the physiotherapy unit included treatment rooms and a gymnasium. Building costs for the maternity and physiotherapy units were not overly high, coming in at £111,136, below the limit of the region’s ordinary building programme and thus not centrally funded. This included the boiler house, which had to be put in to cope with the demands for heating and hot-water in the enlarged hospital.

*Entrance to the back of the Out-Patients’ Department. Perhaps the original porch? Photographed in August 2019. © H. Richardson*

The second, and last, hospital that Joass designed was the Nicolson Mackenzie Memorial Hospital in Strathpeffer which first opened its doors in 1896. It was established as a mineral water hospital, a partly charitable and partly self-funding small enterprise to treat those of limited means seeking treatment for rheumatism and other joint pains.

*South front of the former Nicolson Mackenzie Hospital, photographed in August 2019 © H. Richardson*

Built on the slopes above Strahpeffer, the Nicolson Mackenzie blends in with the neighbouring villas of this surprising spa. It is a buff-coloured, harled building with a tall slim central block of two storeys flanked by single-storey ward blocks. At a public meeting in Strathpeffer in October 1891 the first committee was appointed for promoting a hospital scheme, and a site was gifted by the Earl of Cromartie (at the rear of Mr Lunn’s posting establishment). In 1894, the committee was offered £1,000 from Miss Morison Duncan, on behalf of her mother, Mrs Morison Duncan of Naughton House, Fife, if the hospital was named after her uncle, Dr Nicolson Colin MacKenzie, who had been born in Strathpeffer but had lost his life in rescuing his fellow passengers from the wreck of the Fairy Queen off the coast of Nova Scotia.

*East front and main entrance to the former hospital, photographed in August 2019 © H. Richardson, and below the same view in the mid-1970s, © Crown Copyright: HES (List C Survey)*

With this generous donation work was soon underway on the building, the foundation stone was laid in October 1895 by Miss Morrison Duncan herself. The local newspaper recorded the event, which took place on a fine, if chilly, day. The Mineral Water Home was heralded as a most beneficial institution at this fashionable resort that would greatly benefit the poorer class: ‘it will enable them to sojourn in search of rest and health without incurring anything like the expenditure they cannot at present avoid.’

*OS 2nd edition, 25-inch map, revised in 1904, reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.*

The contractors who built the hospital were all from Dingwall or Strathpeffer: Mr Harrow, mason, and D. Ross, carpenter, both of Strathpeffer; R. Mackenzie & Son, plumber, D. Maclean, slater, and G. Mackay, plasterer, all of Dingwall. In August 1896 the building was completed and the opening ceremony performed by Lilian, Countess of Cromartie. Miss Morrison Duncan was there, along with the local dignitaries and visitors then staying at the Spa. A short notice of the opening appeared in the specialist journal The Hospital in September 1896 which described it as being a ‘pretty little building’. Its success was immediate, and the original provision of just ten beds soon raised to 12.

*The Nicolson Mackenzie photographed in the 1970s, when the harling was painted white. © Crown Copyright: HES (List C Survey)*

It was not the first hospital to be built in Strathpeffer, but there is a mystery surrounding the earlier hospital with just a few scraps of information having so far come to light. It is mentioned in the New Statistical Account for Scotland as having fifty beds – remarkably large for so small a place. It seems to have been established largely through the efforts of Captain James Edward Gordon, briefly M.P. for Dundalk. According to a later newspaper report, the hospital never opened, as Gordon did not appointed any trustees to run it, and the building was pulled down some twenty years after it had been built. This is not quite consistent with a report in the Inverness Courier of 8 August 1838 which mentions a hospital or dispensary at Strathpeffer, as a favourite project of Gordon’s, ‘the design of which is good’. At the time, Gordon was trying to divert funds from the Destitution in Shetland Fund to his Strathpeffer charity. There is also a notice which appeared in the Courier in August 1836, entitled ‘Strathpfeffer Infirmary’ about a bazaar that was to be held to raise money for this charitable institution ‘established for the relief of the destitute and suffering poor, who annually resort to the mineral waters from the surrounding counties.’ Perhaps the truth about this early hospital will emerge one day.

*View from the north-west, the rear of one of the former ward blocks is in the foreground to the right, photographed in August 2019 © H. Richardson*

Its successor survives, though no longer as a hospital. Its future was already under threat in the 1960s, when the rationalisation of services and development of Raigmore were in full swing. It held out until the early 1990s, and was subsequently converted to domestic use. Around that time the harling, which had been painted white, was repainted a buff colour. Renamed Mackenzie House, it became a guest-house, and more recently has been adapted for holiday rentals. I would like to thank the present owner who very kindly allowed me to take some photos of the former hospital.

Sources

Inverness Courier, 30 Oct 1873, p.7: H. C. Burdett, Cottage Hospitals, 1880: The Hospital, vol.58, no.7 July 1962, p.491: Ross-shire Journal, 21 October 1892, p.4: 25 October 1895, p.7; 28 August 1896, p.7: The Hospital, 19 sept 1896, p.406: Ross-shire Journal, 16 July 1897, p.7; 6 May 1910, p.7: The Scotsman, 13 Dec 1938, p.8: Aberdeen P&J, 15 Dec 1944, p.4: The Scotsman, 24 July 1946, p.3

Medical Officer for Health, Ross and Cromarty, Annual Reports1946 adn 1947

Annual Reports of the Department of Health for Scotland: Parliamentary Papers, Estimates Committee, Hospital Building in Great Britain, Minutues of Evidence, Session 1969-70

Inverness Courier, 24 August 1836, p.1, 8 August 1838 p.3: The New Statistical Account of Scotland. V.14 (Inverness, Ross, Cromarty) Edinburgh W. Blackwood and sons, 1845, p.250

see also the Ross-shire Journal 8 Sept 2018

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