BOLDON

Boldon Sanatorium (East Boldon Hospital; Thorncliffe Children’s Home) NZ 380 605 102338 Largely Demolished

East Boldon Infectious Diseases Hospital was built in 1901-2 by South Shields Rural District Council. Their architect was J. H. Morton, of South Shields. The hospital opened on 4 June 1902 and comprised a lodge, admin block, two ward blocks, a discharge block, service block, stable and offices.[Building News, 13 June 1902, p.842.] It had 32 beds, was built of brick with slate roofs. The ward blocks followed the guidelines set out by the Local Government Board, one based on model plan C first issued in 1900, the other on plan B, first recommended in 1888 (see Hospitals Investigator 3).

The hospital became a sanatorium for tuberculosis, either in the late 1930s or in the early years of the NHS. In 1980 the hospital was purchased by Sunderland City Council and was used as a residential home for children until 1992, named Thorncliffe. The buildings were still extant in late 1992 but were then empty. Only the admin block and the former stable building along the western boundary remain (as of 2024). [Hospital Report, Ian Goodall March 1993, BF 102338 Historic England Archives.]

Whiteleas Hospital (Whiteleas Smallpox Hospital) NZ 364 630 102329 demolished

An infectious diseases hospital was built on the site in 1890, comprising a central administration block with flanking ward wings, and two out-buildings to the rear. It seems to have been originally built by South Shields Corporation.

The ward wings were subsequently demolished around 1910 and the hospital expanded with the erection of one large new ward block, a smaller ward block, discharge block and a new administration block. The original admin block was demolished in the interwar years when the new admin block was extended and two further ward blocks built, to designs by F. W. Newby of South Shields.[The Builder, 5 July 1929, p.33.] By that date the hospital had become Whiteleas Smallpox Hospital, administered by North East Durham Joint Smallpox Hospital Board.

The 1930s wards had been demolished by 1959 by which time the remainder of the buildings on the site had been adapted into a home for the aged.

Source: Hospital Report, Ian Goodall, February 1993, BF 102329, Historic England Archives

GATESHEAD

Bensham General Hospital (Gateshead Union Workhouse) NZ 247 612 102343

When the Gateshead Poor Law Union was formed in 1836 it inherited five earlier workhouses, at Gateshead, Heworth, Swalwell, Winlaton and Ryton. Those at Gateshead and Hewarth were retained, the others disposed of. However, by January 1838 the decision had been made to build a new workhouse. A site at Rector’s Field was acquired in June 1839 and the new building completed in 1841 providing accommodation for 276 inmates.

In the mid-1880s the workhouse relocated to a more open site at High Teams Farm – offered to the Board of Guardians in 1885. A competition was held for the design in 1886, jointly won by the South Shields architect J. H. Morton and Newcombe & Knowles of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The new institution was to accommodate 922 inmates. [Building News, 26 Feb. 1886, p.337.] Much of the preparatory work, including brick-making and levelling, was done by the unemployed. The workhouse opened in June 1890.

Similar to the new South Shields Union Workhouse, the Gateshead complex comprised separate sections for workhouse, infirmary and schools as well as entrance lodges and casual wards. A railway siding entered the site on the west side, looping round to the rear of the workhouse section. In the early 1900s separate cottage homes for children were established at Shotley Bridge and a home for consumptives at Whinney House Estate, Shotley Bridge (later Shotley Bridge Hospital). During the First World War patients in the infirmary were moved to temporary wooden huts in order to free the main buildings for military casualties.

The Local Government reforms of 1929 transferred to workhouse section to Gateshead Public Assistance Committee. A new boiler house was built in the early 1930s to designs by F. H. Patterson the Borough Engineer. Later part of the institution, then known as High Teams, became Bensham General Hospital. A Nurses’ Home was built in 1940 (F. H. Patterson, Borough Engineer), extended and altered in 1972.

In 1948 the former workhouse section was renamed again, as Fountain View, and became a local authority hostel for the homeless. The buildings were demolished in 1969. The infirmary section passed to the NHS. In 1972 all the old workhouse buildings apart from the original infirmary were demolished making way for a new disabilities unit. [Hospital Report, Ian Pattison, 1994 BF 102343 Historic England Archives.]

Dryden Road Hospital (Jubilee Children’s Hospital; Gateshead Children’s Hospital) NZ 259 615 102342 demolished

All but the gate lodge and boundary wall have been demolished and replaced by blocks of flats. The Jubilee Children’s Hospital originated with the Gateshead Children’s Hospital Charity founded in 1885. In 1886 Lord and Lady Northbourne gave the charity a two-acre site south of Inskip Place between Durham Road and Old Durham Road. They also gave the charity the sum of £1,280. This, together with funds already raised, enabled a start to be made on building a hospital. Designs were invited to cost £5,000 for a complete hospital, and £1,500 for the first section. Of 22 sets of plans submitted those of William Henry Dunn, of Newcastle, were selected.

The design comprised a central administration block linked by covered ways to four ward pavilions. An aerial perspective was published in Building News in December 1897 when the foundation stone was laid.[BN, 9 Dec. 1887, pp.860, 862.] These plans were amended to facilitate phased construction, with the administration block and one ward block.[Tyne and Wear Archives, T311/1887/95.] The first section of the hospital built was the administration block which opened on 15 October 1888 with 8 beds for children aged between three and twelve years. The ward pavilion on the south side was built in 1907-8, providing 36 beds and allowing patients to be decanted from the administration block, at least until pressure for additional accommodation. The architects for the ward pavilion were Watson & Scott, of Newcastle, who had earlier designed a balcony added to the south side of the admin block.

The original laundry to the rear of the hospital was replaced around 1914, built to designs by Fenwicke & Watson who went on to design a new outpatients’ department and further ward blocks after the First World War. The foundation stone for the outpatients’ building was laid on 7 July 1921, and the building completed the following year. A second operating room was also added and the gate lodge.

By the 1940s the hospital had 45 beds, arranged in two 20-bed wards and a side ward on each floor of the southern ward pavilion. It was transferred to the NHS in 1948, and continued as a children’s hospital until the mid-1970s. After closure in 1976 it later re-opened as a psychiatric day unit, named the Dryden Road Hospital. The original buildings were replaced by a new purpose-built care home on land to the south of the original hospital, comprising Pinetree Lodge, opened in 1994, and Dryden Road clinic. The former hospital was closed and demolished to make way for Dryden and Bowes Lyon Court, a retirement housing complex built in 1999.

Gateshead Dispensary NZ 256 633 102497

The dispensary was occupying this spot by 1858. It was still labelled as a dispensary on the OS map published in 1940. The building appears to be extant (on the 2023 Google Street View), currently or latterly used as council offices. Two-storey brick cubic building with minimal decoration – pilasters supporting stone entablature, over-sailing eaves supported on pairs of stone corbels

Gateshead Nursing Association Nurses’ Home, Coatsworth Road NZ 253 619 102494 demolished

A nursing home was established to the south of the Unitarian Church, probably in the early 1900s, in a converted detached house. The house was extended northwards after the First World War. It remained as a nursing home and clinic into the 1970s, by which time the original house had been extended to the rear. It was demolished, possibly in the 1980s, to make way for Cohen Court, a 3-storey red brick block of sheltered housing.

Norman’s Riding Hospital (Blaydon, Ryton and Wickham JHC Isolation Hospital) NZ 166 608 102684 demolished

Queen Elizabeth Hospital NZ 270 606 BF 102340 and BF 102427 for Sheriff Hill Hospital

Now the main acute general hospital for Gateshead, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital is unusual in having a large part of its initial construction take place during the Second World War. Most war-time hospital building was of temporary hutted buildings built under the Emergency Medical Scheme.

The first hospital on the site was Sheriff Hill Isolation Hospital, built by Gateshead County Borough Council and opened in 1880. This began as an admin block connected by covered ways to two ward pavilions. A gate lodge was added in 1884, and a ward block for smallpox built in 1898. A temporary iron building was added to create a further ward block in 1904.

The development of the site into a municipal general hospital evolved from the suggestions made in the early 1930s following a survey of health services in Gateshead by the Ministry of Health in 1932. The survey recommended the modernisation of Sheriff Hill Hospital and the appropriation of the former workhouse complex at High Teams as a general hospital.

It was not until 1936 that Gateshead Council had the finances to begin implementing any such scheme, but by then the adaptation of High Teams was ruled out on grounds of the high cost involved and objections to its location. Building anew on a green field site was preferred, and the Medical Officer of Health proposed that a fully equipped general hospital of 200-250 beds together with a maternity unit of 20 to 30 beds should be built adjacent to Sheriff Hill Hospital. Existing plans to extend the isolation hospital should be amended to provide a joint laundry, heating plant and an ambulance station. In this respect the Gateshead Council was typical in planning new centralised hospital facilities in the wake of the local government reforms outlined in the Local Government Act of 1929. It was also typical for councils to be hampered by the financial difficulties of the economic depression of the time. Many councils planned large new hospitals in the 1930s and in the immediate post-war years when they anticipated that the new national health service would see their role in the hospital service expanded, rather than reduced as happened when Aneurin Bevin took the radical step of assuming state control.

Work on extending Sheriff Hill Hospital began in 1938 alongside producing a master plan for the development of the general and maternity hospital on the adjacent grounds. Design work was done in-house by the Borough Surveyor’s department headed (F. H. Patterson was the Borough Surveyor), by chief architect H. J. Cook. Building work began in June 1939, the foundation stone of the new administration block being laid on 20 September. With the outbreak of war, High Teams Institution became part of the Emergency Medical Scheme, its accommodation to be made available for casualties. The number of such casualties proved far smaller than anticipated, and so the wards in the infirmary section of High Teams gradually began to be used for civilians. In June 1941 Gateshead Council appropriated the infirmary along with the nurses’ home as Bensham General Hospital. At about the same time work resumed on the Sheriff Hill site – having been suspended the previous summer due to the war. A condition of the resumption of building work was the modification of the original plan in order to provide emergency hospital accommodation.

The modified scheme limped along through the war, by 1943 the heating plant, laundry and ambulance dept had been completed. In July 1943 it was agreed that the new general hospital would be called the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and in December that year the maternity unit was opened. In the autumn of 1944 the general wards were largely completed and were taken over by the Ministry of Health as emergency maternity wards, receiving mothers evacuated from London and staff seconded from Chiswick Maternity Hospital. This section of the hospital was returned to Gateshead Council early in 1945, becoming medical and surgical wards in February that year. The main admin block was completed after the war, with residential quarters for staff, and after the official opening of the hospital by the Queen on 18 March 1948, just three months before the inauguration of the NHS.

Under the NHS an outpatients’ department, A&E, new operating theatre and medical records department were added in 1967. More recently pathology and emergency care centres were added in 2014-15.

Whinney House Hospital (Whinney House) NZ 255 604 102682

Whinney House was a large private villa built in 1867. It was used as a VAD hospital during the First World War and was acquired by Gateshead Corporation, probably after the war, and used as an isolation hospital. It was transferred to the NHS in 1948 and by the 1960s had become a geriatric hospital.

Windy Nook Hospital (Felling UDC Isolation Hospital; Windy Nook Preliminary Training School) NZ 271 606 102341 demolished

Felling Urban District Council built an isolation hospital at Windy Nook in 1903-4. The local architect H. Miller, produced the plans. The hospital comprised an administration block and a pair of wards linked by a covered way and a service block. In 1924 it had 26 beds. Under the NHS the hospital was converted to a nurse training school – probably completing plans put in hand by Gateshead county Borough Council as part of the development of the neighbouring Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The architect was their chief arcthiect H. J. Cook.[The Builder, 24 Sept. 1948, p.372.]

GOSFORTH

St Nicholas’s Hospital (Newcastle upon Tyne City Asylum; Coxlodge Asylum) NZ 240 680 102585

William Lambie Moffatt drew up the plans for Newcastle’s City Asylum which was built in 1865-9. It replaced an earlier asylum, established in 1767 in Warden’s Close in the city that served Northumberland and Durham. The foundation stone was laid in August 1866. It was designed to accommodate between 200 and 250 patients, in a two-storey building with a large dining-hall/recreation hall with a chapel above it. The patients’ accommodation comprised large dormitories and single rooms arranged on either side of a gallery. The recreation hall had an exceptional proscenium arch decorated with Royal Doulton tiles.

The asylum was extended on several occasions, beginning with new blocks at the east and west ends connected to the main building by corridors, these were added in 1884 to designs by A. B. Plummer. In 1892-1900 a further extension was built to designs by John W. Dyson following a competition judged by G. T. Hine, the expert asylum architect of the day. He was a strong advocate of the echelon plan – in which the patients’ accommodation blocks were laid out in an arrow, or echelon formation, which created a more open outlook. The extension housed male patients, the older buildings being then adapted solely for female patients.

In 1916 two villas, each for 40 patients were completed, along with a nurses’ home and a small isolation hospital. Plans were in hand for an admissions hospital in 1939, to designs by R. G. Roberts and A. Anderson. This may be the Collingwood Clinic, built to the north-west of the main hospital.

Sanderson Hospital (Home for Destitute Crippled Children; Sanderson Orthopaedic Hospital School for Children) NZ 238 679 102353 demolished

A home for ‘crippled’ children was established by the Prudhoe Street Mission in a house in Whickham in 1888 which could accommodate up to twelve children. The aim was to clothe, feed, shelter and educate the children, including teaching them a trade in order for them to earn a living.The rent for the house was guaranteed to be paid by W. J. Sanderson, the owner of a brewery in Percy Street, who lived at ‘Highfield’ in Gosforth. Sanderson was Sheriff of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1901 and Lord Mayor in 1907.

The home moved to the Red House, Wallsend Green in 1889, allowing the charity to expand to take 50 children. Then in 1893 the charity purchased the plot in Gosforth fronting Salters Road near the City Lunatic Asylum. There was already a children’s home near by – the Diocesan Home for Girls (later St Hilda’s training school), on the corner of Wolsingham Road – and it was an area that was being built up with housing. The Newcastle architect Edward Shewbrooks drew up plans for a purpose-built home in 1896. The foundation stone was laid by Mrs Sanderson later that year and the new Home for Destitute Crippled Children opened in 1897.[The Builder, 20 June 1896, p.540-1; 16 Oct. 1897, p.311.]

By 1913 the home had been extended with a new wing to the east, and an open-air shelter. The Ochiltree Wing was added in 1914. Staff dormitory accommodation and an electrical treatment apparatus were provided in 1920, and an orthopaedic hospital with 21 beds built in 1923-4. In 1925 the home changed its name to Sanderson Hospital (or more fully, the W. J. Sanderson Orthopaedic Hospital). At that time it still provided a home, schooling and workshops for the children. An additional ward was added in 1929 and in the 1930s a nurses’ home and entertainment hall. By 1938 the hospital and home could accommodate 134 children, about half and half in each division.

During the Second World War the hospital was evacuated to Meldon Park, a country house between Morpeth and Scots Gap, returning to Gosforth by 1946. The hospital was still standing in 2008, but the site had been cleared by 2012. You can still see photos of the buildings from Google Streetview from August 2008. [Source: Hospital Report by Ian R. Pattison, September 1994, BF 102353, Historic England Archives.]

HEBBURN

Ellison Hall Masonic Club (Hebburn Hall; Hebburn Hall Accident Infirmary) NZ 311 641 102321

The mansion house, Hebburn Hall, was built by the Ellison family in 1790-2, having purchased the Hebburn estate in the mid-seventeenth century. The family’s fortunes came from coal mining interests. Sir Henry Ellison was responsible for the late-eighteenth century house, rebuilding the earlier manor house to create a classical pile incorporating some of the earlier structures, perhaps including masonry from the fourteenth-century peel tower on the site. From the mid-nineteenth century Hebburn became increasingly industrialised, and Carr Ellison built himself a new residence in Northumberland.

In 1885 he presented to rear wing of Hebburn hall and some of the surrounding land to the recently formed ecclesiastical district of St John the Evangelist for their new church. The former stable block was adapted as a Sunday School. The remainder of the house was initially let as a private house but in 1897 part of it was converted into an accident hospital. This opened in 1898. Much of the estate was presented to the inhabitants of Hebburn as a memorial to the Great War. The hospital was later renamed the Ellison Hall Infirmary. [Sources: Hospital Report by Ian H. Goodall, 1993, (largely based on P. Perry, A Portrait of Old Jarrow adn Hebburn, vol.2, 1992), BF 102321 Historic England Archive.]

Hebburn Hospital (Hebburn Fever Hospital) NZ 307 636 102322 largely demolished

Hebburn Urban District Council built this hospital for infectious diseases in 1898-9 providing 32 beds. It was located near to Hebburn Cemetery. Proximity of local authority hospitals to cemeteries was not unusual – sometimes this was because the council already owned the land.

The separate smallpox hospital to the south-east was added in 1901, with 16 beds. The smallpox hospital was later leased to Durham County Council for TB cases (from May 1913 on a 20-year lease). The smallpox hospital was demolished c.1933. The isolation hospital comprised an admin block, two wards, discharge block, laundry and mortuary. Most of the buildings on the site have now been demolished to make way for Rose Lodge, a purpose-built unit for learning disability specialist assessment and treatment. The original administration block survives, near the entrance to the site. It is a brick-built, two-storey building that was extended on the west side. It provided staff accommodation as well as office, kitchen and stores. The main ward block was still standing in the early 1990s, a single storey range close to the Local Government Board’s model Plan D issued in 1888.[Sources: Hospital Report by Ian H. Goodall, 1993, BF 102322 Historic England Archives.]

JARROW

Danesfield Maternity Hospital NZ 336 642 102324

Monkton Hall Hospital (Monkton Hall; Monkton Hall Psychiatric Hospital) NZ 319 636 37536

Palmer Memorial Hospital NZ 325 652 102320

Primrose Hill Hospital (Jarrow Fever Hospital) NZ 331 638 102325

River Tyne PSA Floating Hospital NZ 330 650 102328

LONGBENTON

Scaffold Hill Hospital (now Rising Sun Country Park, Resource Centre) NZ 302 695 102683

NEWBURN

Lemington Hospital (Newburn Isolation Hospital) NZ 178 654 102356

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE

Fenham Barracks (Royal Artillery Cavalry and Infantry Barracks) NZ 238 652 102359

Fleming Memorial Hospital for Sick Children (now Fleming Business Centre) NZ 250 658 102256

Hospital for Sick Children, Out-Patients’ Department NZ 252 641 102367

House of Recovery NZ 243 642 102368

Hunters Moor Hospital (Home for Incurables; St Mary Magdalene Home) NZ 236 657 102358

Lying-in Hospital (now Broadcasting House) NZ 251 644 102257

Newcastle Dispensary, Nelson Street NZ 243 641 102495

Newcastle Dispensary, New Bridge Street NZ 253 643 102499

Newcastle Dispensary (St John’s Lodge) NZ 250 640 102500

Newcastle General Hospital (Newcastle upon Tyne Union Workhouse) NZ 228 645 102355

Newcastle Throat and Ear Hospital (now Newcastle College, Rye Hill Building) NZ 238 638 102586

Northumberland, Durham and Newcastle Eye Infirmary NZ 240 640 102630

Princess Mary Maternity Hospital (Northern Counties’ Orphanage) NZ 249 660 102354

Royal Victoria Infirmary NZ 244 650 102352

Walker Park Hospital (Walker Accident Hospital) NZ 291 642 102492

Walkergate Hospital (City Hospital) NZ 282 659 102301

NORTH SHIELDS

Balkwell Isolation Hospital NZ 334 687 102685

Moor Park Hospital (Moor Park Isolation Hospital; now Moor Park) NZ 332 693 102363

Tynemouth Victoria Jubilee Infirmary NZ 348 686 102361

SOUTH SHIELDS

Cleadon Park Sanatorium (Cleadon Park Infectious Diseases Hospital) NZ 382 637 102681

Deans Hospital (South Shields Fever Hospital) NZ 361 655 102326

Ingham Infirmary NZ 370 661 102330

South Tyneside District Hospital (South Shields Union Workhouse; Harton Institution and General Hospital) NZ 366 643 102327

The first South Shields Union Workhouse was built on Ocean Road, close to the shore in South Shields (though the land there was later reclaimed, and Marine Park laid out on the former foreshore). When this building proved to be too small the large new workhouse was built in 1877-80, closer to the dockyard area. It provided accommodation for 700 inmates and had separate sections for the workhouse itself, entrance range, a school and an infirmary. Joseph Hall Morton, the local architect, drew up the plans and the foundations stone was laid in September 1877 by the Chairman of the Board of Guardians and Justice of the Peace, W. M. Anderson.[The Builder, 28 Sept 1879, p.1022: Building News, 2 April 1880, p.412, 28 May 1880, p.646.]

After the first ranges had been completed additions to the site included itch and venereal wards c.1885, wards for ‘imbeciles and lunatics’, further infirmary buildings and laundry buildings in the 1890s, and various other additions and alterations. In the early 1900s a new boardroom was completed at the Union Offices in Barrington Street, and a nurses’ home built at the workhouse for 22 nurses and two servants. [Building News, 6 May 1904, p.666: The Hospital, 18 Feb 1905, p.377.] For most, if not all, of these works Morton was the architect. By 1910 the institution could house 1,200 inmates.

Following the Local Government Act of 1929 the workhouse passed to South Shields Town Council. The infirmary became a municipal hospital, the workhouse division a public assistance institution, the whole known as Harton Institution and General Hospital. The Council Architect, J. Paton Watson, drew up plans for alterations in 1931 to improve the accommodation for the mentally ill patients. A maternity block was added in 1938-9 (J. G. Henderson, architect). Further works in the pipeline in the late 1930s were paused or abandoned at the outbreak of the Second World War, but revived/revised in 1943-5.

The hospital passed to the NHS in 1948. A new maternity unit was commissioned in 1975, presumably as part of the hospital’s redevelopment into a District General. By the mid-1980s half of the original complex had been demolished.

Sources: Hospital Report by Ian Goodall, June 1993, BF 102327 Historic England Archive

SUNDERLAND

Cherry Knowle Hospital (Sunderland Borough Asylum) NZ 402 520 102629

Children”s Centre (Children’s Hospital) NZ 382 555 102335

Durham County and Sunderland Eye Infirmary (Sunderland and North Durham Eye Infirmary) NZ 395 564 102332

Grindon Hall Community Unit (Grindon Hall; Grindon Hall Sanatorium) NZ 362 558 102336

Hammerton House Hospital (Hammerton House; now Hammerton Hall) NZ 399 559 102347

Havelock Hospital, East Site (Sunderland Borough Infectious Diseases Hospital) NZ 365 563 102348

Havelock Hospital, West Site (Sunderland RDC Infectious Diseases Hospital) NZ 364 564 102349

High Barnes Home for the Aged (Institution for the Little Sisters of the Poor) NZ 375 559 102498

Monkwearmouth Hospital (Monkwearmouth and Southwick Hospital) NZ 394 590 102350

Ryhope General Hospital (Cherry Knowle Colony Emergency Hospital) NZ 405 524 102351

Sunderland Barracks Hospital NZ 407 577 102346

Sunderland District General Hospital (Sunderland Union Workhouse; Highfield Institution) NZ 480 566 102337

Sunderland Emergency Hospital (Sunderland Central Library) NZ 399 564 102496

Sunderland Eye Infirmary (Sir John Priestman Durham County and Sunderland Eye Infirmary) NZ 398 551 102333

Sunderland Infirmary (St Mary’s School; now Sunderland University) NZ 391 568 102334

Sunderland Royal Infirmary (Sunderland Infirmary) NZ 390 565 102331

TYNEMOUTH

Preston Hospital (Tynemouth Union Workhouse; Tynemouth Corporation PAI) NZ 354 689 102362

WALLSEND

Sir G B Hunter Memorial Hospital (Wallsend Infirmary) NZ 301 669 102360

Willington Quay Maternity Hospital NZ 319 669 102611

WHICKHAM

Dunston Hill Hospital (Dunston Hill Ministry of Pensions Hospital; Whickham and District Hospital) NZ 220 613 102344

Whickham Cottage Nursery (Whickham Rectory; Whickham War Memorial Cottage Hospital) NZ 207 612 102345

WHITLEY BAY

Prudhoe Memorial Convalescent Home NZ 350 732 BF102493. Pavilion-plan convalescent home of 1867-69, built to serve Newcastle Infirmary. It was built of stone in the Gothic style and comprised an administration block linked by a corridor to ward and dormitory blocks etc. Altered 1876-8 and demolished by 1995