ALLINGTON

Bridport Isolation Hospital  SY 457 938: 100478 (demolished)

Bridport Community Hospital now occupies the site of the former infectious diseases hospital. The Community Hospital opened in 1996. The infectious diseases hospital was built to the north-west of the town in 1898. In its early years it comprised a ward block, ancillary building and a cottage for the caretaker.

An earlier hospital for cholera cases had been built near the harbour in 1866, still in use in 1908, and in 1903 Bridport Rural District Council built an iron isolation hospital at Bradpole. In addition a Berthon hut for smallpox cases was put up on the adjoining site to the 1898 hospital, probably the building shown just to the north of the hospital on the 1928 map below.

Later additions included at least two further ward blocks built some time between 1913 and 1928. A cubicle isolation block was reconstructed in 1944-6 by Harold Cooper, architect, so that part was configured with cubicles and the rest adapted for open-air treatment with French windows and a verandah onto which beds could be wheeled.

For further details see Historic England Archives file: BF 100478.

Bridport Community Hospital

Opened in 1996.

BLANDFORD FORUM

Blandford Community Hospital (Blandford Cottage Hospital) ST 884 069: 100466

Built as a cottage hospital to the north of Blandford Forum, on the other side of the railway from Blandford Union Workhouse. It was built in 1889 and has expanded considerable since then.

By the early 1940s, Blandford Hospital had 21 beds, and was described in the Hospitals Survey conducted during the Second World War as a ‘partly modern general practitioner hospital’.

BOURNEMOUTH

Herbert Hospital (Herbert Memorial Convalescent Home), Alumhurst Road SZ 065 903: BF100462. 

The former Herbert Memorial Convalescent Home was built in 1865-7 by T. H. Wyatt. It was named after Sidney Herbert who is closely associated with Florence Nightingale and hospital reform.

The main building is faced in Purbeck stone with red brick bands & ashlar dressings & has a tile roof. A tower houses the main entrance, and above the doorway is an inscription : ‘let us offer up this hour to the glory of God’. Above the inscription is a niche containing a statue of St Elizabeth, and facing the upper stage of the tower is a clock set in a diamond-shaped panel..

Single-storey chapel built in 1865-7. It comprised a single nave and a short, rectangular chancel, and has now been converted into a games room with a stage in the chancel. Edwardian summerhouse of white timber, c.1910, built for the Herbert Memorial Convalescent Home. A central room is surrounded by deep recesses containing benches and sheltered by the wide eaves. Partition walls have leaded glazing.

At an unknown date the building became a hospital for the mentally ill.

Kings Park Community Hospital (Bournemouth Sanitary Hospital; Bournemouth Municipal Hospital) SZ 118 924: 100403

The main isolation hospital for Bournemouth, built by 1898 just north of the railway line between Boscombe and Pokesdown stations and next to the cemetery, latterly with 67 beds. As part of the reorganisations carried out by the NHS it became part of the general hospital service. Plans to build a new hospital were already under discussion before the Second World War, by which time the hospital was considered to be old, poor and cramped. It became the Gloucester Road branch of the Royal Victoria Hospital and one new block was added to the site in the 1970s. Now renamed Kings Park Community Hospital, much of the original hospital survives.

Royal National Hospital (Royal National Sanatorium for Consumption) SZ 083 914: 100243

Founded in 1855, the original hospitial was designed by E. B Lamb, also architect of the Brompton Hospital for Consumptives. Various additions, including a chapel by G. E. Street of 1865-7, condemned as ‘unimportant architecturally’ by the 1967 Hampshire Pevsner (Bournemouth then being in Hampshire). The war-time survey of hospitals conducted in the early 1940s noted that the sanatorium had 95 beds ‘in old premises’ and took patients from a wide area, including London.

The hospital was converted into retirement apartments in the 1990s.

Royal Victoria and West Hampshire Hospital, Shelley Road Branch (Boscombe Hospital; Royal Boscombe and West Hampshire Hospital) SZ 112 922: 100401 (largely demolished)

A cottage hospital had been established on Shelley road by the late 1880s. In 1899 work began on a new building to the rear, for which Mr A. Bligh Livesay of Bournemouth was the architect. Construction was carried out by Miller & Sons of Lansdowne. The new building provided for an administration block and three ward pavilions, and in the first phase of building two ward pavilions were erected, the Lady Wills and Empress Victoria wards, an isolation ward block, kitchens and part of the main corridor.

Further extensions were made from 1908 with Livesay working in collaboration with Young & Hall.

Royal Victoria and West Hampshire Hospital, Victoria Branch (Royal Victoria Hospital) SZ 076 915: 100402

The hospital was formally opened by Prince of Wales in January 1890. It was erected as a memorial for the Jubilee year of Queen Victoria. The Illustrated London News described it as a ‘commodious building designed to suit the requirements of a general hospital’. The central administration block was large enough to serve future extension. When opened it had just 25 beds

The hospital was designed by the architects Creeke and Gifford in an Italian Renaissance style, of Purbeck stone, with Portland stone dressings. The building contractors were George and Harding. The building comprised a a basement with cellarage and the heating chamber. The east wing was occupied by men’s surgical ward on the ground floor, while the west wing contained the dispensary and a small mortuary accessed externally. On the ground floor of the central block were suites of rooms for the house surgeon, and others for the matron, store-rooms, porters’ rooms, lavatories and offices; an isolation ward, and the operating theatre. There were seven wards on the first floor, wards – one for six beds, one for four beds, the others for two beds each. The kitchens etc were on upper floor of the central block. 

The hospital has been converted into flats, named Royal Victoria Apartments.

BRIDPORT

Bridport General Hospital SY 459 932: 100419 (demolished)

The hospital was establishe in Bridport in 1868, following on from a dispensary. The former general hospital was replaced by the new community hospital built on the site of the former isolation hospital in the 1990s. The original general hospital was subsequently demolished and housing built on the site, (nos 1-7 Thomson Close).

Port Bredy Hospital (Bridport Union Workhouse) SY 469 931: 100477

Built in 1836-7 on a standard cruciform plan for 200 paupers. The architect was Henry J. Whitling.

The institution was transferred to the NHS in 1948, becoming Port Bredy Hospital for geriatrics. It closed in the 1990s and was converted into flats.

CERNE ABBAS

Cerne Union Workhouse (Davidson House Nursing Home; Giant View; Cambridge Manor Care Home) ST 661 017; BF 100484

Built in 1836-7 to the north of Cerne Abbas, with a cruciform plan drawn up by a Mr Wallis based on Kempthorne’s model plan. The contractors were Northover & Biles of Cerne Abbas. An isolation block with a maternity ward was built some time around 1841. The workhouse was converted into flats around 1930, then named Giant View House, but latterly became a nursing home – named Davidson House in the early 1990s, and is now a care home named Cambridge Manor.

For further information and images see Historic England Archives, BF 100484, and the Historic England website also workhouses.org.

CHARMINSTER

Herrison Hospital (Dorset County Asylum) SY 678 947: 100244

CHRISTCHURCH

Christchurch Hospital (Christchurch Union Workhouse; Fairmile House Institution; Fairmile Hospital) SZ 150 939: BF 100461 (largely demolished)

Christchurch Union Workhouse was unusual for its late date in the south of England – it was built between 1881 and 1886 – and its adoption of a London Metropolitan plan form. Except in London, few workhouses were built in the south in the last quarter of the nineteenth century as most Poor Law unions had built a new workhouse in the first decade or so after the Poor Law Act of 1834, or in the 1850s and ’60s. The late date of the Christchurch workhouse may be accounted for by the retention of the Georgian workhouse that had been built around 1760 (the building became the Red House Museum on Quay Road).

In London the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867 had encouraged the erection of new workhouses designed on a pavilion plan, featuring broad pavilions wide enough to accommodate four long rows of beds, rather than the two of the typical hospital pavilion ward. The higher density was thought acceptable for paupers who were not sick, and did not require the greater volume of air to aid ventilation that reduced the risk of the spread of infection.

Christchurch was the only workhouse built in the south of England outside London to adopt the Metropolitan plan. Its architects were local: C. C. Creeke and E. H. Burton. A single-storey range along the front of the site accommodated aged married couples, receiving and casual wards and the board room. A central administration block was linked to accommodation pavilions by corridors, and at its rear were the dining-hall and kitchens. Two yards at the rear were allocated separately to men – for workshops – and women – for laundry work. To the west of the main workhouse was a separate infirmary, soon extended to provide maternity and additional wards.

A nurses’ home was built in two phases, in 1901 to designs by Burton and a later phase in 1933 designed by W. J. Dacombe.

For further information see workhouses.org, or contact Historic England Archives to see the building file (ref: BF 100461). For the hospital’s mid-century history see Reinhard Lindner, From a Workhouse with Infirmary to an NHS Hospital: Historical Study of the First 10 Years of Christchurch Hospital as an NHS Hospital, 1998

CORFE CASTLE

Wareham Council Smallpox Hospital SY 941 843: 100670

DORCHESTER

Damers Hospital (Dorchester Union Workhouse) SY 687 903: 100475 (largely demolished)

Built in 1836 to the west of the town, by the architect George Wilkinson to the standard cruciform Kempthorne plan. A chapel added in the 1890s. Later additions to the site included a nurses’ home probably in the 1930s.

The workhouse was transferred to the NHS in 1948 and renamed Damers Hospital. West Dorset District General Hospital (now Dorset County Hospital) was built on the site to the north (formerly allotment gardens) in the 1980s-’90s. Once the new hospital had been built, the rear wings of the workhouse and some of the additional buildings to the east were demolished. Now only the east wing of the original workhouse (the front range) with contiguous chapel survive and continue in use. The square building in the former garden ground on the east still stands but was unoccupied in 2009, and remained boarded up in June 2023 (see Google Streetview).

The new Dorset County Hospital was built by the NHS in two phases, beginning on the north. The first phase was completed in the late 1980s, and on the completion of phase two the hospital was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth in 1998.

Dorchester Isolation Hospital SY 689 891: 100418 (demolished)

A small isolation hospital had been built well to the south of Dorchester on the Herringston Road by 1902, to which a second ward block had been added by the end of the 1920s. Under the NHS the hospital became an annexe to the County Hospital, initially used for TB patients. By that time further additions had been made to the site, but the hospital remained small and by the early 1980s was surplus to requirements. The hospital buildings were demolished to make way for the private Winterbourne Hospital.

Dorset County Hospital (former), Somerleigh Road. SY 691 906: 100417

Construction began in 1839, to designs by Benjamin Ferrey (also the architect of Dorchester Town Hall). The 1972 Dorset Pevsner guide considered it ‘basically quite a handsome building’ but criticised its having been designed to look like a gabled Elizabethan mansion, which the guide thought ‘really to run away from the design problem’ and ‘not the solution Pugin was then formulating’. Later gate lodge of 1885 in then-fashionable Queen Anne style. Since then most of the expanded hospital has been demolished.

The hospital closed once the new District General Hospital had been built in the 1980s, originally named the West Dorset District General Hospital but since renamed the County Hospital. The main part of the old hospital was converted into housing, named Benjamin Ferrey House.

Royal Horse Artillery Barracks Hospital SY 686 909: 100476

The small barracks hospital seems to have been extant in June 2023, or partially so, and the ground-floor windows boarded up.

LYME REGIS

Lyme Regis Hospital SY 336 921: 100422

POOLE

Alderney Hospital (Poole BC Isolation Hospital; Alderney Isolation Hospital) SZ 042 943: 100465

Probably established in 1889 – if this is the site of Poole Rural District Council’s isolation hospital. There was another smaller isolation hospital further to the north along Ringwood Road at Bankes Heath, which may be identifiable as the hospital established by Branksome Rural District Council. At any event, the map evidence places the Bankes Heath hospital as being established later than the Alderney hospital, and by 1912 the Poole Town Council was running the hospital at Alderney at which time it was described as overcrowded and in need of extensions.

Some additions seem to have been made in 1914-15, with the Borough Surveyor, S. J. Newman as architect. By 1938 three large new ward blocks had been added to the site as well as various ancillary buildings including the lodge.

Two of the pre-NHS hospital blocks and the lodge survive at the present hospital, the hospital blocks being distinctive in stock brick with stripes of red brick. The NHS additions are mostly low rise, red brick detached blocks, and the hospital is mostly devoted to services for the elderly.

Poole General Hospital (Cornelia Hospital; Cornelia and East Dorset Hospital) SZ 020 913: 100464 (demolished)

Originally called the Cornelia Hospital, it was built near to Poole Union Workhouse on a site between St Mary’s Church and Sandbank House on the south side of Longfleet Road. The ground had formerly been allotment gardens. Having been founded in 1889 by Lord and Lady Wimborne, the hospital moved here to a new purpose-built hospital in 1907 built to designs by Walter Andrew.

The original hospital was established in a house in West Street. It moved from there to Weston House, and then to a building on market Street. The foundation stone for its new building was laid on 3 October 1906. When it opened in May 1907 it had 17 beds. The hospital was extended during and after the First World War, with new ward blocks built on the site of Sandbank House to designs by H. Kendall. The neighbouring Parkstone House and grounds were also acquired. A children’s ward, new kitchen and additions to the nurses’ accommodation were opened in 1928, a new operating theatre was completed in 1933 and maternity unit the following year. An out-patients’ department was added in 1937.

By the time of the Second World War it had 117 beds including 9 maternity, but was considered to be an overworked hospital in poor premises with room for development.

The hospital was renamed Poole General after the Second World War and was acquired by the NHS. Subsequent extensions included pathology, out-patients’ and maternity units in the 1950s and early ’60s. Parkstone House was converted into a nurses’ home, with a separate block to the rear. Parkstone House was later demolished to make way for a nurse training school and an extension to the nurses’ accommodation. Between 1959 and 1969 most of the old hospital buildings were replaced by a new District General Hospital, opened in 1969 by Queen Elizabeth.

The new Poole Hospital was the first to be completed in the NHS’s Wessex Region. It was designed in-house by the Wessex Regional Hospital Board architect, S. Kilgour. John Laing Construction Ltd were the building contractors. The 1972 Pevsner guide judged the hospital, along with much of the recent public buildings of Poole’, to be ‘not of outstanding architectural value’… ‘in the block at the back one recognizes Brutalism of the 1960s.’

When it opened in 1969 it had 508 beds, including 52 maternity with 16 special care baby beds, a 50-bed isolation unit, a 30-bed geriatric assessment unit, a 41-bed paediatric unit, a 10-bed day hospital unit, 6 intensive therapy beds adn 4 cardiac beds. The wards were divided into four-bed bays and single rooms. The new nurses’ home was the tallest building on the site at 13 storeys, with accommodation for 202 nurses, in a slender Y-plan tower.

Refs. The Hospital, September 1969, pp.318-9. Also see Poole, the First World War and its Legacy and Poole’s Health Record for more on the history of the hospital; John Newman and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England Dorset, 1972, p.320.

Poole Hospital (Poole Union Workhouse) SZ 018 914: 100404

St Anne’s Hospital (St Anne’s Sanatorium) SZ 052 888: 100463

Designed by the Scottish architect, Robert Weir Shultz, and built in 1909-12 as the seaside branch of Holloway Sanatorium. The building is listed Grade 2*.

PORTLAND

Portland Hospital (Royal Naval Hospital) SY 685 741: 100481 (largely demolished)

Originally built by the Royal Navy, Portland Hospital was designed in 1901. It comprised five detached blocks connected by a covered way, built to the south of the earlier sick quarters, that also comprised a series of detached blocks. This was probably newly built or in the course of erection when the OS-map was surveyed in 1886. To the North-East was a separate hospital for infectious diseases with four detached ward blocks.

The new general hospital was completed in 1906 comprising an administration block, and separate ward blocks for medical cases, surgical cases and officers. In 1957 the hospital (including the sick quarters) was transferred to the NHS, apart from the isolation hospital which was converted into married quarters for Admiralty Police. Only one ward pavilion now remains, adapted to form the present Portland Community Hospital. The sick quarters were demolished around 2005 to create Foylebank Way, a retirement housing development, the former isolation hospital has also been demolished.

SHAFTESBURY

Westminster Memorial Hospital (Westminster Memorial and Cottage Hospital) ST 860 228: 100487

The cottage hospital was built in 1871-4 to designs by J. B. Corby of Stamford. The building contractor was C. J. Miles of Shaftesbury. It was built as a memorial to Richard, 2nd Marquis Westminster, and the foundation stone was laid by his daughter, Lady Theodora Grosvenor, on 25 May 1871. The Bishop of Salisbury performed the opening ceremony on 16 March 1874. Originally the hospital had just eight beds, despite its considerable size.

Patients were attended to by their own medical practitioner, and paid a contribution to their care varying from 2/- to 8/- per week. Subscribers also contributed to the maintenance of the hospital. The number of beds provided slowly increased, with 12 by about 1911. An operating theatre was added in 1907, which was extended in 1930. During the First World War six beds were provided for sick or wounded soldiers, and in 1919 X-ray equipment was installed.

Plans for additions were drawn up by Marshall Arnott Sissons of London in 1928 to provide new wards and convert parts of the original building to staff accommodation and make various other improvements. The extension was completed in 1930, and in 1932 a veranda was added. Further alterations and additions were made after the Second World War, including additions to the out-patients’ block in 1948 and 1971, a boiler house in 1955, and new X-ray department in 1958. Castle Hill House, to the north of the hospital, was acquired around the time of transfer to the NHS in 1948 as a maternity unit.

For further information see Historic England Archives building file BF 100487. There is also a history of the hospital written by W. Farley Rutter, A Short History of the Westminster Memorial Hospital, Shaftesbury, 1871, published in the centenary year of the hospital.

SHERBORNE

Coldharbour Hospital ST 643 176: 100066

Sherborne Isolation Hospital ST 622 173: 100425

Sherborne Isolation Hospital was built some time between 1903 and 1927, on a site to the north-west of Sherborne off the Marston Road. The site is now occupied by New Barton Farmhouse, and the hospital buildings seem to have been demolished.

Sherborne School Sanatorium ST 635 166: 100424

Yeatman Memorial Hospital (Yeatman Hospital) ST 636 167: 100483

Built in 1864-6 to designs by Slater & Carpenter, who also designed the very similar Sherborne School.

The hospital was built in memory of the Revd Harry Farr Yeatman, who died in 1861. Funds were raised in 1866 to build the hospital which had been proposed in 1863 inspired by Cranleigh Cottage Hospital. It was built in two phases, with the centre and west wings constructed first and the east wing added in 1869. An operating theatre was added in 1906, and a children’s ward added some time after 1912. In 1926 plans for a maternity and private patients’ block to the north-west of the main building were adopted. Extensions in 1928-40 were designed by Leslie Moore, with new out-patients’ department, staff and office accommodation built to the south of the original range.

The hospital was enlarged by the NHS in 1965 ‘approximately in a modern style’ according to the 1972 Dorset Pevsner.

For further information see Historic England Archives building file BF 100483. A short centenary history of the hospital was published in 1966: Elizabeth Cockburn and J. E. Gordon, The Story of the Yeatman Hospital, Sherborne, 1866-1966.

St Leonards and St Ives: St Leonard’s Hospital (l04th US General Hospital) SU 102 020: 100468

Built in 1942 as the 104th U.S. General Hospital. It has the typical layout of the hutted war time hospitals, known as spider blocks. The ward blocks were built of reinforced concrete post frameworks with brick block infill and corrugated asbestos roofs. The huts were connected by covered ways.

STOKE ABBOTT

Beaminster Union Workhouse (Stoke Water House), ST 467 009, BF 100482

Built in 1836-7 to designs by Henry J. Whitling and Munday that adapted the model Y-shaped or hexagon plan devised by Sampson Kempthorne. The site chosen was somewhat isolated, about half way between Beaminster and Stoke Abbott.

A small chapel was constructed in 1907. In about 1974 the workhouse was converted into flats, called Stoke Water House, continuing the name that the former workhouse had latterly adopted when it functioned as a home for the elderly.

For further information and images see workhouses.org and the Historic England Archives, building file: BF 100482.

STURMINSTER NEWTON

Sturminster Union Workhouse ST 787 148: 100426

SWANAGE

Dorset Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital (Steepways), Peveril Road SZ 033 782: 100467

A large seaside villa called Hill Side was acquired by the Dorset Red Cross as a children’s hospital and opened in 1919. An open-air ward was added in 1924 (since demolished). The hospital was initially transferred to the NHS in 1948 but it closed in 1954. By the early 1960s the house had been converted into flats, renamed Steepways.

Swanage Cottage Hospital SZ 128 784: 100406

WAREHAM TOWN

Wareham and Purbeck Union Workhouse (Robert Christmas House), SY 918 874: 100407

Wareham and Purbeck Union Workhouse was built in 1836 outside the town walls of Wareham on the west side. It adopted the cruciform Kempthorne model plan, with Carter and Hyde architects.

The building has been converted into housing known as Robert Christmas House.

Wareham Hospital, SY 918 875

Opened in 1972 as a home for the elderly, replacing Christmas Close and named River House. A health centre was built at the same time, both occupying the former grounds to the east of the workhouse. Both are pleasing examples of NHS/local authority design, with effective use of random rubble-stone dressings to walls and chimney. At some point River House became Wareham Hospital. (ref: Health and Social Service Journal, vol.82, 1972, p.542.)

WEYMOUTH

Portway Hospital (Weymouth Union Workhouse) SY 675 785: 100479

Built in 1836 on the site of the old parish workhouse. Its cruciform plan was an adaptation of Kempthorne’s model workhouse by two of the Guardians of the Poor: Thomas Dodson and Thomas Hill Harvey. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century the workhouse was extended to the east.

In 1948 the institution was acquired by the NHS and renamed Portway Hospital, providing general and maternity services. It closed in 1987 and the buildings were refurbished and adapted to create flats, called Union Court, with some of the later buildings demolished.

For further information and images of the site see workhouses.org and the building file at Historic England Archives, BF 100479, see also Historic England website.

Westhaven Hospital (Weymouth Corporation Isolation Hospital) SY 660 795: 100421

Weymouth and District Hospital (Princess Christian Hospital and Sanatorium) SY 682 803: 100480 (demolished)

Built in 1901-2, the Princess Christian Hospital and Sanatorium was designed by the local architects Crickmay & Son to replace an earlier sanatorium in Weymouth established in 1848 by W. Johnson Smith for women and children. Efforts had been made in the early 1860s for a new purpose-built sanatorium, and designs prepared by A. R. Crickmay.

During the First World War the hospital was requisitioned for military casualties. A nurses’ home was added in 1915, that was extended in 1927, and in 1923 the James Miller Memorial Wing was opened. That was followed by a new out-patients’ department built on the east side of the hospital in 1930, designed by C. W. Pike. Earlier, in 1921, the hospital had merged with Weymouth’s Royal Hospital on School Street and been renamed Weymouth and District Hospital.

During the Second World War the hospital suffered bomb damage and the out-patients’ block had to be rebuilt. The hospital was demolished in 1998 and a new community hospital built on the site. For further information on the building see Historic England Archives building file: BF 100480

Weymouth and Dorset County Royal Eye Infirmary SY 683 803: 100423

Weymouth PSA Hospital SY 666 762: 100420

WIMBOURNE MINSTER

Victoria Hospital (Victoria Cottage Hospital) SU 004 002: 100405