Balfour Hospital (1), Main Street, Kirkwall. National Grid Reference: HY 448 105

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. It was a small voluntary cottage hospital.

In 1888 a separate fever hospital was built to the rear to designs by Thomas Smith Peace senior. In the mid-1920s it had three wards and could take 15 patients, and at that time was still connected and maintained by the Balfour. This continued in use until 1938, when the new hospital opened (see below). The building was sold in 1940, and in 1943 opened as the West End Hotel.

BALFOUR HOSPITAL (2), New Scapa Road  HY 446 103

The original Balfour Hospital was replaced by a new building that was officially opened on 6 April 1927 by Alfred Baikie of Tankerness, Vice-Lord Lieutenant of Orkney and Shetland and chairman of the Garden Memorial Building committee. It was designed by Kirkwall’s resident architect, Thomas Smith Peace senior and the building contractor was John Firth. 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. Robert Garden was a native of Rayne in Aberdeenshire who established a number of shops in Kirkwall and had a fleet of cargo vessels and floating shops that served the islands leading him to be dubbed ‘Orkney’s merchant prince’ by the Orcadian.

The hospital was finally built in 1926, and known as the Garden Memorial Building. It provided 19 beds in two 6-bed wards and several small rooms, including one maternity bed. It had accommodation for six members of staff and the resident medical officer, an operating theatre with sterilising room, a small room for out-patients, X-ray unit, kitchen and stores. It is of stone, rough-cast, and occupies a large site. Despite its relatively recent date, by the early 1940s it was considered out-dated, especially the tiny out-patient room and elderly X-ray equipment, and had an awkward layout.

At the start of the Second World War the hospital was evacuated in order to be able to accommodate the anticipated war casualties. In 1940 two ward blocks were constructed in the grounds as part of the Emergency Medical Scheme, providing an additional 84 beds in two 42-bed wards. They were connected to the main building by a long covered way, that did little to shelter those who walked along it from the elements.

There was additionally a third temporary wooden ward block but this was largely been converted into a dwelling for the resident surgeon. There was also a nurses’ block with 18 bedrooms, sitting room, kitchen and two bathrooms and a large store. This too was deficient, its electricity supply ‘uncertain’ and with no gas supply. The Hospital Survey published in 1946 recommended that the hospital be reconfigured by adapting the original hospital into a nurses’ home and turning the annexe into a unit with 30 to 40 general beds, 6 for children with modern isolation facilities, and a 6-bed maternity unit. The theatre and out-patients department should also be relocated closer to the annexe, and the whole connected by ‘weatherproof’ corridors. In the long term the Survey considered that a new cottage hospital would become necessary.

In 1948 the Balfour transferred to the NHS. A new ward annexe was built and in 1966 a new maternity unit was added. A new health centre was was built in the early 1970s, officially opened on 4 April 1973 by Sir John Brotherton, Chief Medical Officer for Scotland. [Sources: Department of Health for Scotland, Scottish Hospitals Survey, Report for the North-Eastern Region, 1946 p.63: The Orcadian Book of the 20th Century, Howard Hazell ed, Kirkwall Press, 2000, p.101 and passim.]

BALFOUR HOSPITAL (3), Foreland Road, HY 446 100

A new hospital was commissioned from Keppie Design in 2015 together with the Robertson Group construction company. It was completed in July 2019 and was officially opened on 25 May 2021 by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

The hospital is a curvilinear two-storey building with mix of flat and shallow pitched roofs with white-painted rendered finish to the external walls, contrasting with areas of stone facing. It was designed as a ‘net-zero’ hospital, being powered by electricity, with air-to-water heat pumps and solar panels supplementing electricity from the national grid. There are backup oil generators in case of emergency. [Sources: Robertson.co.uk Keppiedesign.co.uk ]

CARNESS ISOLATION HOSPITAL, Carness Battery, HY 467 145

The Carness battery was established during the First World War to cover an anti-submarine boom laid across the channel between Carness and Helliar Holm off Shapinsay. Established as a smallpox hospital in a large hut rented from the admiralty c.1920, there were two smaller separate huts and a third with three rooms that could be used as staff quarters. It was kept on a care-and-maintenance basis in case of future need, which occurred in 1932 during a Scarlet Fever epidemic. A larger battery was created here during the Second World War. After the war the area was used as a camp site, already marked as disused on the OS map of 1965.[Sources: The Orcadian… pp.83 and 185: County of Orkney and Burgh of Kirkwall Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health, 1925, p.10: World War One Audit of Surviving Remains, 2013, RCAHMS: Orkney Herald, 22 Sept. 1920, p.3.]

EASTBANK HOSPITAL, East Road HY 455 112 (some later additions demolished)

Eastbank House is a modest Georgian‑style house. It was extended and converted into an infectious diseases hospital and sanatorium in 1936 by a Mr Ferguson for the local authority, replacing an earlier hospital at Scapa. The original house was flanked by new wings.

The hospital opened in 1937 with 40 beds: an infectious diseases’ block with 24 beds, eight of which were in single rooms and a tuberculosis block with 16 beds, some single the rest with two or three beds, opening off a long corridor and some opening out on to an unsheltered veranda. The former house became the administration block with kitchen and staff accommodation. Like the Balfour it is stone and rough-cast. With the decline in the need for this type of accommodation in the post-war years the hospital was converted for use as a geriatric hospital.

The original Eastbank House has been converted into a Guest House, while the south wing of the former hospital has been converted to housing and the north wing was latterly in use as the Orkney Counselling service, named ‘The Life Centre’.

ORKNEY COMBINATION POORHOUSE, Scapa Road, Kirkwall   HY 443 103

The poorhouse for Orkney was built by Thomas Smith Peace, senior (1844-1934), 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. The central three-bay section was of two storeys, flanked by single-storey wings. It was roofed with Welsh slates and given projecting eaves. Thomas Smith Peace was born in Shapinsay, the son of a wood merchant and building contractor. He had worked in the Edinburgh Office of the Office of Works in the late-1850s/early 1860s under Robert Matheson before returning to Kirkwall to commence independent practice in the later 1860s.

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. By the early 1940s the County Home had 52 beds and accommodated the aged and infirm, neglected children and the chronic sick, including some termed at that time as ‘mentally impaired’ (possibly elderly patients with dementia but also possibly patients with severe learning disabilities). It also had two maternity beds. The wards varied in size from six to fifteen beds each. Overall the Home was considered out-dated, with its stone-floored corridors that were narrow, dark and cold, overcrowded wards, inadequate sanitary facilities, scanty staff accommodation and limited equipment. There was a large dining hall, but the kitchen only had a coal range and small gas cooker, the laundry was small and poorly equipped, and the heating, by a few open fires, was insufficient in the winter.

The Scottish Hospitals Survey recommended that the whole building needed internal improvements and modernisation to provide chronic sick accommodation on a hospital standard, the children should be found alternative accommodation, maternity cases should go to the Balfour, and the ‘mentally impaired’ should be provided with separate accommodation. Central heating should also be installed. [Sources: Scottish Record Office, plans, RHP 30875/1‑4; RHP 30876/1‑14: Department of Health for Scotland, Scottish Hospitals Survey, Report on the North-Eastern Region, 1946, p.64: Workhouses.org.]

The building had changed little in appearance by the early 2000s, but more recently new sheltered housing has been built to the rear (Andersquoy Sheltered Housing) and the original building converted into flats, including the addition of a second storey to the single-storey side wings and cladding of the rear in timber.

SCAPA INFECTIOUS DISEASES HOSPITAL, Kirkwall (Demolished)   HY 443 086

The former Sea‑plane station at Scapa was converted in 1922-3 by T. S. Peace into a sanatorium for tuberculosis, having been used as a temporary isolation hospital in 1920 during an epidemic of scarlet fever. 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. The pavilion was opened in July 1924. It was located facing the sea, was constructed of timber, and consisted of two main wards at each end containing four beds in each, and off a passage between the wards further rooms, including four single-bedded rooms and other rooms for staff, dining rooms for the patients, bathrooms etc. This provided 12 beds altogether, six each for men and women. The building was centrally heated and lighted by lamps. It was extended in 1928

If the location on the 1-inch map is correct, the building seems to have remained in use as part of a council yard into the 1960s, although when Eastbank Hospital was built in the 1930s the intention had been to demolish the Scapa pavilion. The building had certainly been demolished by the early 2000s. Various Harbour Authority buildings occupy the general site today (2025).[Sources: The Orcadian Book of the 20th Century, p.83.]