ANNAN COMBINATION HOSPITAL   This small hospital at Annan was built c.1895 as an infectious diseases hospital and situated to the north-east of the town. From the two maps below it can be seen that the hospital was extended considerably with a further three ward pavilions and ancillary buildings. The range to the north was probably a TB ward block perhaps added in the 1920s. After 1946 the hospital was converted into a children’s home and later into a home for the elderly. The buildings seem largely to survive, some converted into private residences, the former TB block is in Springbells park. [Sources: Dumfries and Galloway Health Board Archives]

ANNAN HOSPITAL, Stapleton Road Community hospital, opened in 1987 as a 30-bed long-stay unit, but by 2012 had become an 18-bed facility for palliative care and rehabilitation. [Sources: Dumfries & Galloway Standard, 26 Sept 2012, p.7]

ANWOTH COTTAGE HOSPITAL This modest cottage hospital resembled a private house. It was of one storey and attic, with a gabled bay to the left and a dormer window over the two right hand bays. The hospital has closed. (There is a postcard showing the hospital on Flickr.)

CASTLE DOUGLAS HOSPITAL, ACADEMY STREET   The cottage hospital in Castle Douglas was built in 1897 as a memorial to Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. It was designed by Richard Park of Newton Stewart and opened on 13 October 1899. It follows a standard plan providing six beds, distributed in two wards for male and female patients and one private room. It was constructed of brick.

In 1901 the Victoria Ward was added by B. Imrie, of Castle Douglas.

A nurses’ home was built in 1934 with ten bedrooms, a sick room and two sitting rooms. A further extension was opened in July 1935, comprising two new wards, an emergency ward, and out-patients’ department. These additions cost in the region of £5,600 towards which £1,000 was gifted by the Misses Duff or Barcaple. Their donation was used to provide a new male ward of ten beds, known, a little unfortunately, as the Duffs’ Ward. The female ward was to be known as the Silver Jubilee Ward. At the same time a memorial was unveiled to the chief founder and former chairman of the hospital, Graham Hutchison of Balmaghie. Towards the end of 1938 there were plans for another extension scheme, this time to provide a new operating theatre, radiology department and to reconstruct the kitchen premises.

The 1948 Scottish Hospitals Survey noted that it had by then 32 beds with a small operating room and x‑ray department. Under the NHS some minor alterations have been made to the front of the building, and an extension to the south using matching red brick and slate roofs. There was a proposal to add a day care centre and physiotherapy unit in 1989, but I have not yet discovered whether or not this relates to the southern extension.  [Sources: The Scotsman, 14 Oct 1899, p.8; 2 July 1935, p.10; 5 Nov 1938, p.17. Dumfries & Galloway planning portal, planning ref 89/N/2/0014.]

CASTLE DOUGLAS INFECTIOUS DISEASES HOSPITAL, DUNMUIR ROAD (Demolished)   Also known as Stewartry Hospital, to the north of Castle Douglas. It was built c.1910-30, and closed in 1940 when Lauriston Hall was opened for isolation cases. It originally comprised two single-storey ward blocks and a two-storey administration block. The buildings were still extant and remarkably intact in 2009.

CHARNWOOD MATERNITY HOSPITAL, CHARNWOOD ROAD, DUMFRIES (demolished) The stone built villa was converted into a maternity hospital c.1922 with a new wing added to provide a labour room and an anaesthetic room.

CLENOCH MATERNITY HOSPITAL, STRANRAER (Demolished)   This hospital began as a small infectious-diseases hospital,  built over the wall from the Stranraer Poorhouse, probably in the late 1880s or early 90s. In the early twentieth century several further ward blocks were added to the site. The hospital was transferred to the NHS and became a maternity unit.

CRESSWELL MATERNITY HOSPITAL, DUMFRIES (demolished)   First established during the Second World War, a a new 42-bed ward unit was completed in 1959 for the Western Regional Hospitals Board. It was built on the site of the former Dumfries Poorhouse (see Rosevale House). [Sources: Michael Geals, Cresswell Maternity Hospital 1939-1989, Dumfries & Galloway Health Board, n.d. c.1989]

CRICHTON ROYAL HOSPITAL, DUMFRIES   The oldest part of the main building was opened on Monday, 3 June 1839, designed by William Burn, and extended by William Lambie Moffatt in 1867‑71. The asylum was founded by the trustees of James Crichton, Physician to the Governor General of India who had amassed a large fortune. In 1809 he had purchased Friars Carse and married in the following year Elizabeth Grierson. He died in 1823 leaving no issue. The residue of his estate, after various legacies, was to be used for a charitable purpose chosen by his widow and approved of by her co‑trustees.

In 1829 Mrs Crichton made her first suggestion of founding a College but this scheme was abandoned. In 1833 she proposed founding and endowing a Lunatic Asylum in the neighbourhood of Dumfries. The new scheme was met with derision from the town’s people and with scathing attacks in the local press, calling the proposed building the ‘Crichton Foolery’. In the face of this opposition the necessary site was acquired of forty acres and William Burn was requested to submit plans, specifications and estimates in December 1834. Burn’s plan comprised a double Greek cross with wings radiating from two octagonal stair towers. It was a more ambitious version of his earlier Murray Royal Asylum at Perth, and was closely based on Watson and Pritchett’s published designs for the Wakefield Asylum. Insufficient funds to carry out the complete design led the trustees to decide to proceed with half of it with a view to completing the design when funds permitted.

The foundation stone was laid at a private ceremony in June 1835. In March 1838 the building was almost completed and the appointment of the first superintendent was under consideration. Mrs Crichton recommended Dr W. A. F. Browne, who had been Medical Superintendent of Montrose Royal Asylum since 1834. Browne studied medicine at Edinburgh University after which he continued his studies on the continent, particularly in France, where he visited the asylums of Paris and studied under the leading psychiatric doctors of the age, Pinel and Esquirol. In 1837 he had published an influential series of lectures on ‘What Asylums Were, Are and Ought to Be’.

Under Browne’s management the asylum prospered and acquired the high reputation sustained by subsequent medical superintendents. The asylum buildings also expanded and included many buildings of great significance in asylum design. In 1841, shortly after the hospital had opened, a house was built for the superintendent by a local architect William M’Gowan. It was enlarged in 1888 by William Moir and is now known as Campbell House and used as office accommodation. One additional building on the site which was later demolished was the Southern Counties Asylum, built to accommodate paupers, Browne and the building committee visited and examined workhouses and asylums in England seeking for a model for the new building in 1848. The new building was built by the local man, M’Gowan, and opened in the following year. It was demolished gradually from 1914‑27.

The completion of Burn’s original scheme for the main building was carried out in 1867‑71 by William Lambie Moffatt. Due to the position of the Southern Counties Asylum there was insufficient space to build to Burn’s plan, and the Moffatt wing was truncated at the south end, where a new principal entrance was made with a recreation hall above. The need for a recreation hall was another reason for departing from Burn’s original design. The extension was later criticised by Easterbrook when he became Medical Superintendent:

It also utilised a considerable portion of the south or sunny aspect of a building intended primarily as a residence for patients, for the position of the Recreation Hall, which, never‑the‑less, would be occupied as a rule only at nights for dances and other evening entertainments, a mistake frequently perpetrated by architects of hospitals who are apt to subordinate their essentially utilitarian or intrinsic purpose to that of their appearance.

After the extension was completed Burn’s original turnpike stair at the centre of the octagonal tower was removed to create a light and airy octagonal hall rising through three storeys, with ornamental trellis work serving to restrain any patient with a desire to leap over the galleries. Further extensions were made to the main building of which the principals were a new lavish Dining‑hall by Sydney Mitchell & Wilson in 1903, and a new wing with board‑room by J. Flett, the clerk of works, in 1923.

One of the outstanding buildings on the site is the Crichton Memorial Church by Sydney Mitchell. Begun in 1888 as a memorial to Mrs Crichton as the foundress of the institution the design was long in the finishing. Even once the plans had been finalised there were many delays before the church was finally completed in 1897.

The Farm Building, now {1990} used as the Industrial Therapy Unit, was being constructed at the same time as the memorial church, designed by the clerk of works, John Davidson, it was modelled on the farm building at Woodilee Asylum at Lenzie, and on a farm steading on the Isle Estate, Kirkcudbright. The Farm building was begun in 1890 and nearing completion in 1892.

The Farm had been the first stage in a project to expand the asylum on modern lines with departments for the different classes of patients. A Laundry Annexe for female pauper patients was designed in 1895 by Sydney Mitchell, Johnston House. It was a lavish building and was soon adapted for other purposes. A Farm annexe, intended for the accommodation of male pauper patients working on the farm was begun in 1898 also by Sydney Mitchell, latterly known as Criffel View.

Carmont House and Rutherford House were designed by Mitchell as a male and female pauper infirmary or admission hospital. The plans were drawn up in 1899 and the villas opened in 1904. In March 1905 a deputation of the board with Sydney Mitchell visited asylums in Germany where the colony system was well established and in December visited Bangour and Kingseat asylums. In 1906 plans for four villas were drawn up; Annandale and Eskdale as closed villas and Browne and Dudgeon as hospital villas for so‑called second class patients. These were completed 1909‑10.

In 1908 Dr Easterbrook took over as Physician Superintendent and his first task was to take stock of the buildings on the site. There were then sixteen houses in use, half of which were purchased properties. In 1910 he visited institutions, clinics and laboratories in Britain, Germany, Austria and France and in 1913 he went to America.

From 1910 work began on four more villas, two more closed villas for paupers, Maxwell House and Kirkcudbright House (the latter now known as Kindar, Merrick and Fleet) and two open villas for paupers, Galloway House and Wigtown House (the latter now Mochrum and Monreith).

After the war a nurses’ home was built, now Hestan House, built by James Flett, the clerk of works, and opened in 1924. In that year Flett also built the Hospice as a hospital villa for the 1st class patients (now known as Ettrick, Glencairn and Nithsdale). In 1930 the Hostel (now McCowan House), as a further nurses’ home and in 1932 he built Grierson House, as an observation villa.

The last major building on the site, championed by Easterbrook, opened in 1938; Easterbrook Hall was designed by Easterbrook with James Flett, in 1934 as a Central Therapeutical and Recreational building containing a variety of facilities for all the inmates including a small swimming pool. The buildings on the main site have a surprising unity considering the century over which they were built, achieved in the main by the unifying red sandstone. The later buildings were of flat roofed fireproof‑construction, in ashlar. [Sources: C. C. Easterbrook, The Chronicle of Crichton Royal (1833‑1936), Dumfries, 1940: G. B. Turner, The Chronicle of Crichton Royal 1937 ‑ 1971, Cumbria,1980 Dumfries and Galloway Health Board Archives, plans.]

DALRYMPLE HOSPITAL, STRANRAER   The Dalrymple Hospital was built by the Western Regional Hospitals Board c.1976‑7. It was replaced by the Galloway Community Hospital which opened in 2006 (or 2007)..

DUMFRIES & GALLOWAY ROYAL INFIRMARY, DUMFRIES   This hospital replaced John Starforth’s earlier Infirmary which then became the Nithbank Hospital. It was begun in 1970, opening on 4 July 1975, and was designed by Boswell, Mitchell & Johnson. It has now been superseded by the new infirmary at Cargenbridge, completed in 2018.

DUMFRIES POORHOUSE, see below under Rosevale House

DUMFRIES ROYAL INFIRMARY (FORMER), HIGH DOCK, DUMFRIES (Demolished) The original Dumfries Royal Infirmary was built in 1778. It was a modest building resembling a gentlemen’s country house. In 1846 the first use of anaesthetics in an operation in Britain was carried out at the Infirmary by Dr William Scott who administered sulphuric ether to a patient.

GALLOWAY COMMUNITY HOSPITAL, STRANRAER opened in 2006 (or 2007), built on the southern part of the former Rhins of Galloway Poorhouse.

GARRICK HOSPITAL, EDINBURGH ROAD, STRANRAER (demolished)   The Garrick Hospital opened on 18 May 1898 and was designed by the Newton Stewart architect, Richard Park. Before the present hospital was built the Stranraer and District Cottage Hospital had been founded in a small converted cottage in 1892. In 1896 a legacy from the late George Garrick, watchmaker, jeweller and Provost, allowed a new purpose‑built hospital to be provided.

Various additions later included a mortuary in 1900, the acquisition of the adjacent house as a nurses’ home in 1923 and in 1955 a new health centre was built to the rear of the hospital and was the second purpose built health centre to be opened in Scotland. A further major extension was built c.1968. The hospital closed when the Galloway Community Hospital opened in 2006, built on a part of the former Poorhouse site. The old hospital was demolished in 2013.

THE GROVE CONVALESCENT HOME, KIRKPATRICK IRONGRAY   The Grove house was built in 1834 for Wellwood Hyslop Maxwell to restrained Gothic designs by the Birmingham architect Thomas Rickman. The new house incorporated parts of an existing house of unknown date, presumably that was the house described in Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Scotland of 1825 as a handsome mansion ‘in the castellated style, with a tower rising from the south entrance’.  Rickman’s rebuild featured an entrance set in a hefty square tower (see View Dumfries and Galloway for a photograph of the house when it was in use as a convalescent home).  Additions were made in 1869 to designs by Peddie and Kinnear.

During the First World War the house was used as a convalescent home, providing 83 beds, and damaging the interiors. In 1938 the house was purchased by the Dumfries Royal Infirmary as a convalescent home. The conversion was carried out by Lawrence Wren with Matthew Purdon Smith. The home was closed in 1975.

JARDINE HALL AUXILIARY HOSPITAL (Demolished 1964)   Described in Groome’s Gazetteer as ‘an elegant mansion with pleasant grounds’, this imposing classical mansion house was built c.1814, and has been attributed to James Gillespie Graham. [SourcesSAVE, Lost Houses in Scotland, 1980.]

KIRKCUDBRIGHT & DISTRICT COTTAGE HOSPITAL   The Kirkcudbright Cottage Hospital opened in 1897. It was converted from the former Townend School by the local architect Mr Wallace.

The hospital initially comprised two wards and was extended in 1919 to provide an operating theatre, staff bathrooms and a mortuary. The extension was completed in 1921 but was so ill‑planned that the route to the mortuary was through the kitchen. This being totally unacceptable the solution adopted was to take the bodies out through matron’s parlour window. This state of affairs remained until 1933 when more satisfactory arrangements were made. In 1967 Leigh Cottage was acquired for matron’s quarters. [Sources: Morag Williams, Kirkcudbright Cottage Hospital ]

KIRKCUDBRIGHT POORHOUSE  (demolished) The plans for Kirkcudbright Combination Poorhouse were approved by the Board of Supervision in May 1848. It was built in 1849-50 to the designs of Jonathan A. Bell of Edinburgh. Bell had been a pupil of Thomas Rickman in Birmingham (architect of The Grove, see above) in the practice of Rickman & Hutchinson and remained in with them until 1837. The poorhouse was later renamed Burnside House, but was condemned as unfit for purpose in 1946 and demolished not long afterwards. (See also workhouses.org)

KIRKPATRICK FLEMING COMBINATION POORHOUSE   Plans for the Kirkpatrick Fleming Poorhouse were drawn up in 1857 by John Hodgson, an architect and civil engineer from Carlisle. It was a simple two‑storey, T‑plan building. [Sources:Scottish Record Office, plans, RHP 30856/1‑7: see also workhouses.org.]

LANGHOLM FEVER HOSPITAL   The fever hospital at Langholm, described in the 3rd Statistical Account as being ‘at the cemetery near Skipper’s Bridge’, was later converted into a hostel for forestry workers on the Buccleuch Estates. [Sources: 3rd Statistical Account – Dumfriesshire]

LAURISTON HALL ISOLATION HOSPITAL CASTLE DOUGLAS This small infectious diseases unit was opened in October 1940 in the converted private house.

LOCHMABEN HOSPITAL   The hospital opened as the infectious diseases hospital for the county of Dumfries on 16 May 1908 and was designed by F. J. C. Carruthers, of Dumfries.

It originally comprised a stone‑built administration building and three pavilions, only one of which remained in place today. These provided accommodation for scarlet fever, diphtheria and typhoid. In around 1926 the hospital expanded and developed into the county sanatorium, plans were drawn up for new blocks by Evan Tweedie. None of these later buildings now remain on the site. A new hospital was built on vacant land to the south, the rest developed for housing. [Sources: Morag Williams, A History of Lochmaben Hospital, 1996]

MIDPARK HOSPITAL, DUMFRIES Opened in 2012 as an acute mental health unit, replacing the Crichton Royal Hospital.

The architects were Ingenium Archial Ltd, with WSP and Arups engineers and erz Ltd of Glasgow, landscape architects. The entrance garden ‘DoubleWalk’ was designed by Jencks2 (Charles and Lily Jencks) – the spiral feature that can be seen on the aerial above.

MOFFAT HOSPITAL   The small cottage hospital at Moffat was originally opened on 9 October 1906 and was designed by Edward Maidman, of Edinburgh. However, the extensive alterations undertaken in 1983‑4 have completely obscured the earlier work. In 1928 a maternity wing was added to the rear of the hospital financed by Sir William Younger in memory of his wife. It was carried out by the local architect Evan Tweedie.

MOORHEAD’S HOSPITAL, ST MICHAEL STREET, DUMFRIES Built in 1751-3 as a paupers’ hospital, endowed by James and William Moorhead. A large new wing was added to the rear in the later nineteenth century. It later became a home for the aged and orphans, later still just for the elderly. The building has since been converted to private use. [Sources: workhouses.org]

NEWTON STEWART HOSPITAL

An infectious diseases hospital had been built to the south of the town by 1907, as well as a separate smallpox hospital close by. The smallpox hospital was demolished in the 1970s-80s, at which time the former fever hospital was extended.   [Sources: Morag Williams, History of Newton Stewart Hospital 1897-1997, Dumfries & Galloway Community Health NHS Trust, n.d. c.1997.]

NITHBANK HOSPITAL, DUMFRIES Built as Dumfries Royal Infirmary, John Starforth of Edinburgh 1869-71, additions by James Barbour 1895-7. 

PARKHEAD HOSPITAL, DUMFRIES   Built as the infectious diseases hospital for Dumfries. The Scottish Hospitals Survey, 1948, described it as brick‑built and rough‑cast of the standard pavilion‑plan with 30 beds. It had closed by 1980.

RHINS OF GALLOWAY POORHOUSE, STRANRAER (Demolished)   The poorhouse for the Rhins of Galloway was first proposed in 1849. Although it is said to have been built in the early 1850s, it does not appear on this site on the OS Town Plan of 1867.

By the 1960s it was called Waverley House Hospital and was run by Wigtownshire County Council. Waverley House and the neighbouring Clenoch Hospital were demolished in the 1970s and replaced by Dalrymple House and Dalrymple Hospital on the ground immediately to the south of the former poorhouse. (See also workhouses.org)

ROSEVALE HOUSE, DUMFRIES (Demolished)   Built in 1853-4 to designs by John Henderson of Edinburgh, who was awarded the commission after a competition. [Sources: workhouses.org]

Stewartry Hospital, Castle Douglas (see under Castle Douglas Infectious Diseases Hospital)

THOMAS HOPE HOSPITAL, LANGHOLM   The hospital opened in 1897 and was designed by the London architect J. H. T. Wodd. Thomas Hope was a native of Langholm who made his fortune in America.

In April 1894 the Hope Trustees at Langholm announced their resolve to invite several architects to furnish plans of a hospital to be erected in memory of the late Mr Hope, who left over £100,000 to build and endow such an institution.

‘The building is not to be a very large one; but it is stipulated that it shall be of good architectural character, indicative of the objects of the Trust, with the name of the donor inscribed on a suitable panel or tablet. The site has already been procured, and is at the north west corner of the Market‑place having a frontage of about 54 feet.’

Ewan Christian in London was the assessing architect and on his recommendation one of his former pupils, John Henry Townsend Wodd, was given the commission. Wodd worked in partnership with Wilfrid Ainslie, another former pupil of Christian’s, and they had already established themselves in the field of hospital design with work at Guys Hospital, London and a hospital at Easingwold, Yorkshire.

Their design for the Langholm Hospital certainly abounds in architectural character, weighing on the side of eccentricity. One of the buildings’ distinguishing features is its octagonal Mortuary. There are also elaborate ironwork gates supplied by a London firm. [Sources: Building News, 27 April 1894, p.566.]

THORNHILL HOSPITAL   Thornhill Hospital was built c.1901 as an infectious diseases hospital to designs by Evan Tweedie for Dumfries County Council. It was stone‑built with two ward blocks and an administration block which also provided some accommodation for nurses. The hospital provided 24 beds.

UPPER NITHSDALE POORHOUSE, THORNHILL   The poorhouse is situated at Gatelawbridge, to the north-east of Thornhill. The plans for the poorhouse were drawn up in 1854 by William Lambie Moffatt. By 1927 it had been re‑named Rowantree House. The buildings were still extant in 2001. [Sources: Scottish Record Office, plans, RHP 30855/1‑15: see also workhouses.org]

Wigtownshire Home, Stranraer (Demolished)  Also known as Waverley House Hospital. See under Rhins of Galloway Poorhouse.