BALFOUR HOSPITAL (FORMER), KIRKWALL
The Balfour Hospital originated in 1836 with a bequest from John Balfour of Trenaby for building, furnishing and endowing a hospital. In 1845 the Trustees purchased a house in Main Street from James Sherer for £450 and the hospital opened shortly afterwards.
In 1888 a separate fever hospital was built to the rear. This continued in use until 1938, by which time the rest of the hospital had been replaced by a new building elsewhere in the town (see below). The original building survives {as of 1990}, latterly in use as a hotel.
BALFOUR HOSPITAL, KIRKWALL The present {1992} Balfour Hospital opened in 1927. It replaced the earlier hospital in the town of the same name. In March 1914 the widow and family of Baillie Robert Garden offered to fund a new building but the outbreak of War delayed the venture. The hospital was finally built in the 1920s. During the Second World War, hutted ward blocks were constructed in the grounds as part of the Emergency Medical Scheme, and a new ward annexe was built. Later a new maternity block was added.
EASTBANK HOSPITAL, KIRKWALL Eastbank House is a modest Georgian‑style house.
It was converted into an infectious diseases hospital and sanatorium by Mr Ferguson, and opened in 1937. It replaced the Scapa Infectious Diseases Hospital. With the decline in the need for this type of accommodation the hospital was converted for use as a geriatric hospital.
ORKNEY COMBINATION POORHOUSE, SCAPA ROAD, KIRKWALL The poorhouse for Orkney was built by T. S. Peace, senior, and opened in 1883.
It was planned to accommodate 50 paupers on the standard H plan, plainly constructed of ‘wally‑wall’ stone in squared rubble work with freestone dressings for sills and lintels of red sandstone. It was roofed with Welsh slates and given projecting eaves. The original plans by Peace were rejected by the Board of Supervision which suggested that they should be made simpler and less costly. To aid the Parochial Board in remodelling the plans, they enclosed tracings of the plans of the Skye and Long Island Combination Poorhouses. [Sources: Scottish Record Office, plans, RHP 30875/1‑4; RHP 30876/1‑14.]
SCAPA INFECTIOUS DISEASES HOSPITAL, KIRKWALL (Demolished) The former Sea‑plane station at Scapa was converted in 1923 by T. S. Peace into a small fever hospital. It seems to have been one of the last works by Thomas Peace senior, and his nephew, also Thomas Smith Peace, acted as his assistant on this commission.
I have just been reading ‘The Hist. of Scotland…’ by R.A. Houston and W.W.J. Knox [eds] [Folio Soc. 2006] In volume 1 in the section dealing with the Reformation to the Union 1560-1707 written by Keith M. Brown, writing of ‘The Labouring Sorts’ on p. 344 he wrote; “Many pre-Reformation hospitals survived, as at Dundee or Lanark, while new establishments were founded at other sites, for example at Aberdeen, where two new institutions supplemented the three existing hospitals. Further north, new hospitals were founded at Inverness and even on Orkney.” No precise source or date is given for this assertion and it was in pursuit of further information that I chanced upon this website. I wonder therefore if you can shed any further light on a possible hospital foundation in Orkney dating from the 17th C? or anything pre-dating the Balfour?
Excellent question – to which the short answer is no, but I will look into it. I had understood that hospitals in the medical sense had not survived the reformation, but there were certainly quite a few that did in England. Often the term hospital in the early modern period was applied to almshouses and schools rather than hospitals in the modern sense, but pest houses and leper hospitals also persisted through the medieval into the early modern periods.
I don’t know about new post-reformation hospitals on Orkney, but the hospital of St Magnus founded in the fifteenth century was said to have survived into the seventeenth century see Canmore: https://canmore.org.uk/site/8329/st-magnus-hospital-and-chapel-spittal
As I’m sure you know, the name ‘Spittal’ for an area or in a street name is often an indication of there having been a hospital in the vicinity.
This would make a good topic for a post in the future – it is now on my to-do list.
with best wishes
from Harriet
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