County Antrim

BELFAST

Belfast City Hospital, Lisburn Road

Belfast City Hospital’s origins lie in the Belfast Union Workhouse, which first opened in 1841. It was built following the Poor Law Act for Ireland of 1838 which had established poor law unions across the country each overseen by a Board of Guardians and legislated for the setting up of a workhouse in each union. The work of the Boards of Guardians was closely monitored by the Poor Law Commissioners. The English architect George Wilkinson was employed by the Commissioners to design and supervise the erection of 130 new workhouses across Ireland. He was directed to make the buildings inexpensive but durable.

Wilkinson drew standard designs for a workhouse for 400 inmates and a workhouse for 800 inmates. Like their counterparts in England and Wales, the workhouses included accommodation for the sick. In Wilkinson’s plans this was in a separate block to the rear of the main building. From around 1847 fever hospitals were added to most workhouses, in part as a response to the Famine, which also prompted the erection of a further 30 workhouses in Ireland. ‘Outdoor’ relief was prohibited by the Irish Poor Law – that is the giving of financial assistance to paupers to allow them to remain in their own homes. [ University of College Dublin Library, Cultural Heritage Collection.]

The Belfast workhouse accommodated 1,000 paupers, and so the model plan was enlarged by an additional storey. The main block had three storeys and attics. The infirmary section was small, with sick beds for the sick and a few rooms for ‘idiots’ – probably meaning individuals with learning difficulties and/or disabilities. The fever block was built to the north of the main workhouse range.

A workhouse school was built to the south in 1848. It was in similar style, three storeys with gabled end bays and a gabled entrance bay – its main feature was the tall turrent at the centre (probably connected to the building’s ventilation system). An amendment to the Poor Law in 1861 extended the Guardians’ responsibilities to the sick poor which resulted in the conversion of the school into an infirmary in the early 1870s, while a new school was built to the rear. Ward extensions were erected in 1903, and a nurses’ home was built in 1909-10. In the 1920s this second school building was also converted into hospital accommodation, this time for the mentally ill, and was renamed Windsor House. [John F. O’Sullivan, Belfast City Hospital, A Photographic History, 2003.]

In 1935 the Jubilee Maternity Hospital opened. There were many and various additions and alterations in the first half of the twentieth century. By the early 1940s the complex had some 1,680 beds, including 148 in the recently built maternity hospital. The conditions within the hospital were mostly spartan and often overcrowded. After transfer to the NHS in 1948 modernisation began. The large communal wards were ‘cubicalised’ (sub-divided by inserting cubicles that were not full height, had solid lower sections and glazed panels above with curtains.

In 1960 it was decided to redevelop the site with a new central hospital. The result was a tower-on-a-podium design with racetrack wards in the tower and the outpatients’, clinics and ancillary services in the two-storey podium. Building works began in 1967, but progress was slow and the plans revised during construction in the early 1970s. It was not completed until 1984, but during the commissioning phase remedial works were found to be necessary. The first patients were admitted in March 1986. The 15-storey tower block was the third tallest in Ireland (76m/250ft high). The hospital gained an International reputation for its cancer research programme. A new Oncology Centre opened in 2006. [See Ulster Medical Society.]

Belfast Hospital for Sick Children

The hospital originally opened in a building on King Street in 1873. It moved to a purpose-built hospital in Queen Street in 1879. The architects were Thomas Jackson & Sons. The new building was hemmed in between a dwelling house and the corporation gas offices. It was set back from the road and rose to a tall three storeys and attic, faced in red sandstone. Although at the time Queen Street was a reasonably quiet location, the rooms likely to be troubled most by street noise at the front of the building were reserved for office and staff accommodation, while the children’s wards were to the rear on the first and second floors, comprising two large wards with 18 beds each, and two small wards for isolation or special cases with six beds in each. Ventilation must still have been hampered by the adjoining buildings. A single-storey out-patients’ department was located behind the main building, with a light-well or open area between them. This was accessed from College Court and arranged in such a way as to ease the traffic of patients coming and going: entering the waiting-room, being seen in a consulting room, and leaving via the dispensary where any medication could be supplied. [The Irish Builder, 15 Dec 1877 see archiseek.]

The hospital moved again in 1932 to the expanded Royal Victoria Hospital site where the District Asylum formerly stood. Tulloch & Fitzsimmons were the architects of the new building, commenced in 1928 in the fashionable if conservative Neo-Georgian style of the time. The main building facing the Falls Road is of three storeys and attic, the end bays slightly projecting, of red brick with minimal Portland stone dressings. Some of the wards were decorated with picture tiles depicting nursery rhymes. This building has also been replaced as the children’s hospital with the latest building completed in 1998, also on the Royal Victoria site, the old building remained in use and was one of a number of buildings on the site put forward for listing in 2015. [see also: H. G. Calwell ‘The history of the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, The Queen Street days’ in The Ulster Medical Journal, 40(2) 1971, pp.85-110.]

Belvoir Park Hospital, Belfast (Belfast City Infectious Diseases Hospital)

Latterly serving as a cancer hospital, it opened in 1906 as Belfast City Infectious Diseases Hospital. The buildings were designed in 1900-1 by the local architects, Young & Mackenzie. The architect John Mackenzie visited some of the main fever hospitals in England and Scotland before plans were finalised and approved in August 1901, in order to produce the most up-to-date design. (There are similarities with Glasgow’s Rucchill Hospital in the inclusion of a raised basement.)

Three storey ward pavilions were in two lines leading southwards from the administration block. Three pavilions to the west of the main hospital buildings were the earliest built on the site and were temporary iron buildings that accommodated smallpox patients – these had been put up in haste following an outbreak of smallpox in the city in 1902, before construction had begun on the main hospital.

Construction of the permanent buildings took place between 1904 and 1906, the building contractor was Robert Corry Ltd of Belfast. Decorative stone carving was undertaken by Winter & Thompson. It was the first municipal hospital built by Belfast City Corporation. The site, part of Purdysburn Estate, had been purchased in order to relocate the Belfast District Asylum. A local Act of Parliament of 1903 was required (City of Belfast Hospitals Act).

When the hospital was officially opened in 1906 it comprised the admin block and five ward pavilions (one for observation cases) and ancillary buildings (disinfecting house, laundry, engine and boiler house, stables, mortuary, and lodges). Later additions were also designed by Young & Mackenzie prior to the outbreak of the First World War. A Nurses’ Home of 1926 was designed by James R. Young, of Young & Mackenzie.

Generally known as Purdysburn Fever Hospital, it was renamed the Northern Ireland Fever Hospital and Radiotherapy Centre and then Belvoir Park Hospital. Closed 2006. Site redeveloped by Neptune Group in 2014-17, retaining parts of the original buildings. See Northern Ireland Listed Buildings Database

Clark Clinic

Claremont Street Hospital

Forster Green Hospital

Begun in Forbreda House, bought from the Crawford Family by a wealthy Quaker tea-merchant and developed as a sanatorium. City morgue built in grounds, buildings were disused and awaiting re-developement in 2016. Non-acute hospital, services include neurology, care of older people and child and family centre. On the same site is the Knockbreda Health and Wellbeing centre, opened in 2009. Various new buildings proposed or in progress on the site, critical care building, 2015, Acute Mental Health Inpatient Unit, 2017, New Children’s Hospital, 2021; Knockbracken Healthcare Park

Haypark Hospital, Whitehall Parade

Johnstone House

Mater Infirmorum Hospital

This catholic hospital had been established in a private house on Crumlin Road in 1883, founded by the Sisters of Mercy.  In 1900 it moved to a purpose-built hospital that had been designed in 1898 by the local architect W. J. Fennell whose plans had been selected after a competition. It was designed on the pavilion plan and  provided 150 beds for adults and children. It included an ‘extern’ or out-patients’ department in the western ward pavilion.The elevation published in The Builder shows the central administration and entrance block flanked by ward pavilions. An unusual feature of the hospital was that the pavilions had flat roofs which provided a garden for convalescent patients. There were also balconies at the ends of the ward to allow convalescing patients to sit out in the sunshine. The balconies were strung between castellated turrets that contained WCs and a bath.

There was a separate nurses’ home, a feature that was becoming more common, and an improvement on providing nurses with dormitories or rooms in the attics of the hospital itself.  Nurses’ homes were often linked to the hospital by a glazed corridor that allowed the matron to keep her staff within sight, and control all comings and goings of the nurses and any ‘visitors’ they might wish to entertain. As the Mater Infirmorum was founded by the Sisters’ of Mercy, the top floor of the administration block was reserved for the use of the nuns who worked in the hospital – a gate across the staircase was inscribed ‘Convent portion’ to keep it secluded. The chapel was also more prominent than in most hospitals and was reserved for Catholics, although the hospital was intended to admit patients of any faith.

The Mater Infirmorum was recognized as a university teaching hospital in 1909, associated with the Queen’s University Medical School. A maternity unit opened in 1945, and in 1952 a neuro-psychiatry department opened – the first to be based in an acute hospital.  The hospital was not transferred to the NHS in 1948, but became integrated in the NHS in 1972. A new Day Procedure Unit opened in 2001, and a radiology department in 2007. [References and sources: Rory S Casement, ‘History of the Mater Infirmorum Hospitals’ in The Ulster Medical Journal, 38 (1) 31 Oct 1968 pp. 62-75: The Builder, 29 Sept. 1894; 19 Sept. 1896; 5 May 1900, p.450.]

Musgrave Park Hospital

Regional specialist hospital specializing in orthopaedics, rheumatology, sports medicine and rehabilitation. Located in suburbs of South Belfast and named after the adjacent municipal parkland. Opened in 1920. During the Second World War it became a temporary base for soldiers in the American army preparing for the Normandy landings, housed in Nissen huts on the site.

In 1950 the Northern Ireland Hospitals Authority turned to the Nuffield Provincial Hospital Trust’s research team to design an extension to the hospital, the result of which was Nuffield House. In 1953 the designs Richard Llewelyn Davies and John Weeks were completed, the building itself was built between 1955 and 1957. It was officially opened by the Duchess of Gloucester in October 1957. This fairly modest two-storey block, was hugely influential. The low-rise ward elevations were given a distinctive glazing pattern, with a continuous strip of clerestorey lights beneath which the plain wall surface was punctuated by further window bays.  central sterile supply department and an operating theatre. Further additions by the Nuffield team to the site were a central sterile supply unit – probably the first in the United Kingdom – and an operating theatre suite.

The war-time huts were demolished to make way for a Regional Acquired Brain Injury Unit which opened in 2006. refs and sources: Northern Ireland, Hospitals Authority. South Belfast Hospitals Management Committee, Nuffield House, Musgrave Park Hospital, Belfast, 1957: Nuffield Foundation. Division for Architectural Studies, Nuffield House, Musgrave Park Hospital, Belfast: The Case History of a New Hospital Building, 1962.: The Irish Times, 9 Oct 1957, p.9

Royal Belfast Hospital

The building shown below was originally built in 1817 in Frederick Street as a fever hospital, but in 1847 a new fever hospital was built at the workhouse. This building then became the Belfast General Hospital, and from 1875 the Royal Belfast Hospital. In 1899 its name changed once more to the Royal Victoria Hospital, and new purpose-built premises erected on the Falls Road, completed in 1903 (see below). Following removal to its new home the Frederick Street building was demolished. [refs and sources: see Archiseek – Irish Architecture. With grateful thanks to Dr Gill Allmond.]

Royal Jubilee Maternity

Moved to present site in 1933 and became the Royal Maternity Hospital officially opened in 1934, in 1935 the Belfast Board of Guardians officially opened the Jubilee Materniy Hospital. The Mater Infirmorum opened a 24-bed hospital in 1942 for maternity cases. One of four linked hospitals that makes up Northern Ireland’s biggest hospital complex.

[refs and sources: John F. O’Sullivan, ‘Two Hundred Years of Midwifery 1806-2007’ in the Ulster Medical Journal, 2006 Sep; 75 (3) pp 213-222 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1891762/ ]

Royal Victoria Hospital

One of the most extraordinary Victorian general hospitals built in the UK,  with an amazing turreted verandah-balcony extending along the end of the ward pavilions. Origins lie with a number of institutions, from the Belfast Fever Hospital and General Dispensary in Factory Row – the dispensary opening in 1792, the hospital in 1797 with new premises built in 1817. The move to its present site in Grosvenor Road was made in 1903. The hospital was designed by Henman and Cooper of Birmingham in 1899, completed in 1906. Claimed to be the first air-conditioned public building in the world.

Mid-20^th century additions – unspecified. Re-modeling completed between 2001 and 2003, a new building replaced the red brick Victorian hospital gained commendation in the Royal Cosity of Ulster Architects Design Awards and a commendation in the Irish Landscape Institute Awards of 2002. This was phase one, phase 2a comprises an imaging and central decontamination centres, completed in 2006-7; phase 2b a critical care building (planning consent 2007); phase 2c replacement of outpatient centre and eye, ear, nose and throat buildings. Also to be a new women’s and children’s hospital.

Samaritan Hospital, Lisburn Road

Shaftesbury Square Hospital, 116-118 Great Victoria Street 

Built as the Belfast Ophthalmic Institution on a site acquired from the Rev. H. T. Cooke for £2,230. It was designed  by W. J. Barre for Lady Johnson, in memory of her father Mr Thomas Hughes. The builders were Messrs Fulton.  The hospital opened on 1st January 1868. It was extended by Blackwood & Jury 1927.

The Institution relocated to the Royal Victoria Hospital in 1946. Following the Second World War the hospital was run by the Northern Ireland Hospitals Authority and in 1969 it was renamed ‘Shaftsbury Square Hospital’. The Belfast Health & Social Care Trust closed the building in 2010 and later sold the building along with Nos 118-120 Great Victoria Street, which had been amalgamated into the hospital in the later 20th century. Nos 116-120 were placed on the market during autumn 2012 by Ardmore Commercial, on behalf of the Belfast Health & Social Care Trust.

TB Institute, Durham Street

Opened in 1918, built to designs by Young & Mackenzie. Later used as blood donor centre.

Throne Hospital, Whitewell Road

Children’s hospital, opened 1874, with separate convalescent home added in 1877. Later  became a hospital for the elderly. Closed 1992.

ANTRIM

Antrim Area Hospital

Largest hospital in the Northern Trust. Acute Hospital. Nucleus Hospital, Doran Consulting provided the civil and structural engineering servides for the 300-bed hospital that was built on a green field site for the Health Estates Agency. Nucleus concept adapted to accommodate 3-storey height construction. In situ reinforced concrete was used up to eaves level, with structural steelwork and timer being used in the pitched roof construction. The reinforced concrete design benefited from the modular planning concept and variations from the structural arrangement adopted were minimal. A key feature of the design was the use of a structural ceiling grid at eaves level. This grid not only supports services but also provides substantial restraint to the top of the partition studding.

The scheme had a 30-month design period, a 36-month construction period and the constract was procured using the traditional tender route. During construction, a new Area Laboratory Block was added to the contract. The hospital was opened on the due date and was within budget, despite the main contractor having to be replaced late in the contract when the parent company went into receivership. ources and refs: Doran Consulting https://www.doran.co.uk/antrim-area-hospital – see also Antrim Area Hospital A&E dept on same site

Holywell Hospital

Former County Antrim Lunatic Asylum, built in 1894-9 to designs by John Lanyon of Belfast. The builders were H & J Martin, also of Belfast. Elements of an echelon plan – but not many pavilions – has single-storey link corridors etc. Still acute etc mental health services, with 149 beds for acute admission, dementia assessment etc. [refs and sources: Northern Ireland Listed Buildings database ]

Massereene Hospital

Muckamore Abbey Hospital

Mental Deficiency Institution, 1930s. Completed in the 1950s for 1,000 patients housed in 22 villas each housing 40 to 50 residents. Cost for completed was estimated at £2m in 1956. Still providing inpatients etc facilities for people with severe learning disabilities and mental health needs, forensic needs or challenging behaviour. [Ref: The Hospital, Vol. 52, no.3, March 1956, pp.180-1]

BALLYCASTLE

Dalriada Hospital

Non-acute community hospital 32 beds. Formerly a workhouse for Ballycastle Poor Law Union designed by George Wilkinson and built in 1841-2 for 300 inates. and fever hospital, the workhouse has since been demolished. Became Dalriada District Hospital after 1923. Building looks 1960s/70s

BALLYMENA

Balleymena Cottage Hospital, Thomas Street (Northern Health & Social Care Trust offices), NGR NW 256 613

The cottage hospital at Ballymena was first established in 1881 with just five beds, though demand for beds meant that it stretched to accommodate nine patients. It moved into a new building in 1885. Plans for the hospital had been drawn up by Godfrey W. Ferguson of Donegal Street Belfast by the summer of 1882 when tenders were being advertised for building the new cottage hospital. However, these seem to have been set aside, as a plan was submitted to the hospital committee two years later in May 1884, presided over by Lord Waveney, but at that time it was decided to visit the Fever Hospital (attached to the workhouse) with a view to either using the same plan or something similar. Two months later, the building contractor, James Dallas, had begun work on the site at the Park on a contract of £1,500. The site had been granted by Lord Waveney.

The new building was designed to accommodate 24 patients, though later this seems to have been reduced to 22 beds. By 1948 had a maternity unit, but the hospital closed in 1994 after the new Antrim Hospital opened.

Braid Valley Hospital, Cushendall Road (Ballymena Union Workhouse and Fever Hospital), NGR NW 260 617

Braid Valley Care Complex –former workhouse for 900 inmates built in 1843 by George Wilkinson, plus a muddle of low-rise buildings and temporary structures. New health centre by Keppie and Hoskins 2016, commissioned in 2008. [refs and sources: RIBAJ https://www.ribaj.com/buildings/missed-appointment ]

Waveney Hospital

Built in 1912-15 to designs by Patterson and Grahame, architects, for the Ballymena Board of Guardians. The building contractor was William Dowling of Belfast. Erected  on the north side of the Ballymena Workhouse, the building  was ‘practically completed’ by the end of February 1915. The work was carried out by the Ballymena Board of Guardians to replace the old infirmary at the workhouse. In 1914, at the outbreak of the war, it was placed at the disposal of the War Office for nursing wounded soldiers.

The Local Government Board inspectors had long been commenting on the need for an improvement to the existing infirmary at the workhouse, and sanctioned a loan of £7,500 for the new building. The local newspaper considered that the plans, by Patterson ad Graham(e), displayed ‘clever architectural ability’. Tenders were received in April 1913, of which William Dowling’s was the lowest at £6,585. F. D. Brown acted as consulting mechanical engineer.

Work commenced in the Spring of 1913, supervised by Arthur Taylor, from Caergwrie, Flintshire, Wales, the clerk of works. At a late stage in the contract Taylor left to take up another appointment and Hugh McCann, from Ballymena, took over for the remainder of the work, including laying out the grounds.

The local newspaper was enthusiastic about the new building: ‘Viewed from the exterior, the hospital is an imposing building, presenting that light, clean appearance typical of modern structures of the kind’. It had nicely planted well laid out grounds. The exterior of the building was roughcast, painted white, the roof of green Buttermere slates.

Inside, a spacious entrance hall gave access to ‘lofty corridors’ to left and right connecting the two main ground-floor wards in the wings, each with fourteen beds, and smaller wards in the central block. To the rear of the entrance hall were the kitchen and services. A sanitary tower at each end of the corridor contained the lavatories etc, ‘The various fittings and fixtures in these white-tiled lavatories are the las word in modern hospital equipment.’

A wide stone stair led to the upper floor, where there was a similar arrangement of large wards in the wings and smaller ones in the central block, but there was also an operating theatre, surgery and nurses’ sitting room. Nurses’ bedrooms were provided in the attics. The hall, corridors, operating room and service areas had terrazzo paving, the wards having pitch pine floors. All angles between walls, ceilings and floors were rounded off to prevent dust from accumulating.

The trades and craftsmen employed in building the hospital were: Alex.Clyde, Ballymena, plumbing and sanitary work; Messrs Riddels Ltd Belfast, and Walter Macfarlane & Co, Glasgow, ironwork; Messrs Peter Fraser & Co. Ltd, Glasgow, Terrazzo paving; Messrs Norman MacNaughton & Sons, Belfast, wall tiling; Messrs Walter Hirst & Son, Ballymena, roads and avenues. Heating was by low pressure system, installed by Saunders & Taylor, Dublin. [Sources: Dictionary of Irish Architects; Ballymena Weekly Telegraph, 27 Feb 1915, p.5.]

BALLYMONEY

Robinson Hospital

Formerly the Robinson Memorial Hospital opened in 1933, a gift from Samuel Robinson of Philadelphia in memory of his parents.Designed by Thomas Houston, of Belfast. Intermediate care facility, for rehab after fracture surgery, also palliative care. Next to the Ballymoney Health Centre. [refs and sources: http://robinsonmemorialhospital.org.uk ]

Route Hospital

CARRICKFERGUS

Carrickfergus Hospital (demolished)

CULLYBACKEY

Peter Stott Martin House, Craigs

CUSHENDALL

Cushendall Hospital, Shore Road NGR NW 410 840 seems to have been demolished

A ‘House of Rest’ was established in Cushendall in 1885, intended for ‘poor convalescents or persons of very limited means who need change of air rest and nourishment for a limited period.[Ballymena Observer, 4 April 1890.] It was already being referred to as a cottage hospital in 1886, when children were being sent there for convalescence from the Belfast hospital for Sick Children.[Witness (Belfast), 12 Nov. 1886.] A building fund began to be collected at about that time. Katherine McDonnell of Cushendall gave £3,000 and Lord Antrim supplied stones from his quarries free of charge. [Irish News and Belfast Morning News, 23 Oct. 1899; Belfast News, 29 Oct. 1896: Antrim History.]

Katherine McDonnell was the daugher of the Medical Poor Law Commissioner for Ireland, Dr John McDonnell, who was also a Commissioner of the local Government Board for Ireland, while her grandfather Dr James McDonnell was one of th efounders of the Belfast fever hospital. Katherine trained as a nurse and became sister in charge of the Cushendall hospital when it first opened in the High Street (the house later known as Sundial House). The new hospital was built in 1896 to designs by a Mr Hicks of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, with McLaughlin and Harvey from Belfast as the building contractors.

During the First World War the hospital was used for sick and wounded soldiers, and after the war a number of beds were reserved for children suffering from non-pulmonary tuberculosis, funded by the Tuberculosis Authority. In 1948 the hospital was transferred to the Northern Ireland Hospitals Authority. It remained a GP cottage hospital until closure in 1995.

LARNE

Moyle Hospital

Former workhouse built 1841-2 to designs by Geroge Wilkinson for 400 inmates. Fever hospital added in mid-1840s. Larne Poor Law Infirmary and from 1929 Larne District Hospital. Front wing demolished. – now community hospital and outpaeitn services. Intermediate Care Unit on the site in the Inver Building. refs and sources: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, admin records from 1903: http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Larne/

Sir Thomas and Lady Edith Dixon Hospital, Cairndhu

Smiley Hospital

LISBURN

Killowen Hospital

Lagan Valley Hospital

Workhouse on the site, Lusburn Poor House, became Lisburn and Hillsborough Distric Hospital in 1922. Renamed Lagan Valley Hospital in 1947 after a major extension. Enlarged since, in part due to closure of geriatric units at Killowen and Lissue, and c.2000 gained a new A&E wing.

Lisburn Hospital

Lissue House

PORTRUSH

Hopefield Hospital

NEWTOWNABBEY

Greenisland Hospital, Shore Road

Whiteabbey Hospital

Established as a TB sanatorium by the Belfast Board of Guardians, who purchased a private house, the Abbey, in 1904. The Abbey had been the home of the architect Sir Charles Lanyon. Four ward pavilions were built and the house adapted for offices. There was accommodation for 215 patients. In 1913 the sanatorium was transferred to Belfast Corporation. Single-storey hutted blocks were added, along with a Nissen hut, presumably during the Second World War. More recently a four-storey block was added, perhaps in the 1980s.

County Armagh

ARMAGH

Armagh Community Hospital

Former workhouse, for Armagh Poor Law Union, built in 1840-1, George Wilkinson, – large for 1,000 inmates . Later known as Tower Hill Hospital. http://www.geograph.ie/photo/4998579 . refs and sources: http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Armagh/.

City Hospital

Built in 1774 to designs by George Ensor.

Longstone Hospital

Possibly part of St Luke’s site – just to north on other side of Mullinure Lane – post-war, low-rise

Mullinure Health & Wellbeing Centre

On the site of St Luke’s – small single-storey building ?date – looks 1970s.

St Luke’s Hospital

Former County Lunatic Asylum – radial plan

Tower Hill Hospital (see Armagh Community Hospital)

LURGAN

Lurgan Hospital

Assessment clinic and community stroke rehab service. Former Wilkinson Workhouse of 1840-1 but much altered and parts demolished. 1929 became Lurgan and Portadown District Hospital

PORTADOWN

Carlton Maternity Hospital

Craigavon Area Hospital

Teaching hospital, opened in 1972 to serve Craigavon New Town, replacing Carleton House, Lurgan Hospital, Bandbridge Hospital and others as the main acute centre in the region. Until the 2006 reform of the NI Health and Social Care trusts, the hospital was the main centre of the Craigavon Area Hospital Group Trust, which was amalgamated with several other trusts to form the Southern Health and Social Care Trust.

New Dorsy Psychiatric unit (Beattie Flanigan, consulting engineers). Lots of post-2000 buildings

Bluestone Mental Health Unit

On the Craigavon site – built 2003-14 The design for the project has been developed by architects Milligan Reside Larkin Limited and O’Hagan and Associates Limited. [refs and sources: https://www.farrans.com/media-centre/news/works-begin-at-bluestone-mental-health-unit ]

County Down

BANBRIDGE

Banbridge Hospital (demolished)

Former workhouse later Banbridge District Hospital http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Banbridge/

Banbridge Polyclinic

Opened 2016 health and care centre replaced health centre at Scarva St, Banbridge Social Education Centre for adults with learning disabilities and Copperfileds, a day care centre for adults with a physical disability.

BANGOR

Bangor Community Hospital

Rather nice looking ?early 60s block

CRAWFORDSBURN

Crawfordsburn Hospital

DOWNPATRICK

Downe Hospital

Local 49-bed hospital, includes maternity – designed by Scott Wilson, won an RIBA award for it in 2010. According to e-architect, the modern three storey hospital has been designed to be sympathetic to its historic landscape and provides a bright, welcoming and healing environment for patients, staff and visitors. RIBA judges commented “The new building departs from the original institutional form by breaking down the mass of an array of smaller wings springing from a central entrance. One benefit of disintegrating a large building into smaller architectural forms is the effect it has on the sense of wellbeing in the hospital’s many rooms. All spaces are daylit and where possible naturally ventilated. This is not groundbreaking or heroic architecture, but it is a sophisticated response to a complex building type, which owes its success to straightforward design that is welcoming and offers a sense of reassuring ease to its users.”

Replaced earlier hospital, empty and boarded up in 2014. [refs and sources: http://www.geograph.ie/photo/4138457 : https://www.e-architect.co.uk/ireland/downe-hospital

Downshire Hospital

Former Down District Lunatic Asylum. Originally built between 1865 and 1869 to designs by the county Surveyor, Henry Smyth. It provided accommodation for 333 patients, in four wards, two infirmaries and 45 single rooms.  Later extensions and additions included two-storey pavilion end blocks in 1882-3, extensions of c.1895 and c.1904, gasworks 1905, Finneston House, 1955. Later changed its name to Down Mental Hospital and, under the NHS, Downshire Hospital. It was listed category B1 in 1983. [refs and sources: Northern Ireland Historic Listed Buildings database]

Quoile Hospital

DROMORE

Cowan Heron Hospital

DUNDONALD

Ulster Hospital

Teaching hospital. Founded as the Ulster Hospital for Women and Sick Children in 1872, originally on Chichester Street in Belfast city centre moved to Mountpottinger Road, then Templemore Avenue. The hospital was destroyed during the Second World War, and plans to build a replacement were made under the National Health Service. In March 1956 work was scheduled to commence soon, to provide a hospital of 500 beds for general cases as well as for women and children. The estimated cost at that time was £2m. The design of the complex was prepared by Frederick Gibberd for the Northern Ireland Hospital Authority in four distinct buildings: maternity; out-patients and main entrance; children’s, Radiology-Pathology; and the main ward blocks. A standard ward unit was designed for all three ward blocks, based on a grid of 10ft 6in. centres, with a depth of 24ft, two bays forming a six-bed ward. The buildings were of steel-frame construction, faced in pre-cast exposed aggregate cladding slabs or brickwork – the latter for end stops to some elevations.

The new building was completed in 1962 at Dunonald, renamed the Ulster Hospital. Plans to replace the hospital with an entirely new building around 2000 were scrapped in favour of refurbishment. A new maternity block, critical care unit and renal unit were built, revised redevelopment plans were made in 2006, and for anew operating theatres and a mulit-storey car park. The latter opened in 2007. [Sources: Architects’ Journal, 17 Oct 1957, p.607.]

KILKEEL

Mourne Hospital

MOIRA

Moira Hospital

NEWRY

Daisy Hill Hospital

Local teaching hospital. On the site of the former Newry Workhouse. Proposals for a new building on the site.

Newry General Hospital

NEWTOWNARDS

Ards Community Hospital

Former workhouse http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Newtownards/

County Fermanagh

ENNISKILLEN

County Hospital

Erne Hospital  (demolished)

Opened in 1964. Four storeys, medical, surgical, gynae, assessment unit, etc. connected accommodation incorporated maternity and neo-natal services. Closed 2012

South West Acute Hospital

Opened in 2012 following closure of the Erne Hospital, opened by Queen Elizabeth. First in Northern Ireland with single side rooms.

County Londonderry

COLERAINE

Causeway Hospital, 4 Newbridge Rd, Coleraine BT52 1HS

Acute general hospital, opened in 2001, 240 beds, taken 11 years to complete and replaced Coleraine Hospital and the Route Hospital in Ballymoney. Scheme was approved in 1997.

Coleraine Hospital

Mary Ranken Hospital

Ratheane Hospital

DERRY

Altnagelvin Area Hospital

Plans for a new general hospital to serve the north west of Northern Ireland were drawn up by Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardall, and work began in 1949, although the hospital was not completed until 1960. The early plans comprised three separate blocks, the general hospital and maternity wing to the south, with garages, laundry and boiler house block to its north-east, and on the north side staff accommodation. Plans were for a total of 576 patients’ beds distributed as follows: Maternity 70; Antenatal, 30; general surgery, 175; general medical, 150; paediatrics, 40; gynaecology, 35; ophthalmology, 20; ENT, 30; dermatology, 10; psychiatry, 8; sick staff, 8. The design was dramatic, tall slab blocks, the staff accommodation in three sections set at right-angles to each other, the main ward block angled to make the most of its south-facing setting. By 1954 these plans had been considerably scaled back, the exciting angled ward block abandoned in favour of straight blocks, and the whole scheme now parcelled up for phased construction. The number of beds, too, were reduced to 300 and the complex divided into two wings, an 11-storey ward wing, and an 8-storey treatment wing. Maternity cases were absorbed back into the main ward wing.

Originally just known as the Londonderry hospital, a new name was chosen as completion was nearing in 1959. It was named after the area of Altnaglevin where it was built, courting criticism for such a lack of imagination. When the first phase was completed in 1960 it was hailed in the architectural press as the first completely new hospital to be finished in the United Kingdom since the war. This is arguable. Vale of Leven Hospital, Alexandria, to the north of Glasgow, was completed in 1955.

Additions and expansion taken place since 2004. [Sources. The Hospital, Jan. 1960, p.69.]

Foyle Hospital and Special Care Centre

Grangewood Hospital

New acute mental health inpatient unit in Londonderry, opened in 2012 at Gransha Park

Gransha Hospital Built to replace the former Londonderry Lunatic Asylum, built in 1827-9, a little north of this site. Plans had been drawn up by 1956 for a new hospital for mental patients at an estimated cost of £2m, to provide 750 beds. It was designed on the villa system, with villas ranging in size from 30 to 60 beds. Lakeview Hospital (below) was built on part of the site, though many of the villas were extant c.2012 [Ref: The Hospital, Vol. 52, no.3, March 1956, pp.180-1.]

Lakeview Hospital, 12a Gransha Park, Clooney Road, Londonderry BT47 6WJ

For adults and children with learning disabilities, it opened in late 2005, replacing Gransha Hospital (latterly named Stradreagh Hospital).

St Columb’s Hospital

Waterside Hospital mental health care facility built in the 1980s-90s.

LIMAVADY

Roe Valley Hospital

Former Limavady Union workhouse , now Limavady Community Development Initiative, with most of the original buildings surviving and renovated for other uses.

MAGHERAFELT

Mid-Ulster Hospital

Former workhouse http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Magherafelt/

County Tyrone

CASTLEDERG

Derg Valley Hospital

The Valley Hospital had its origins in Castelderg workhouse, being the fever hospital associated with it of c.1847. The workhouse closed in 1929 and was subsequently demolished, but in the same year the fever hospital was modernised and extended to become the Derg Valley Hospital. Refs and sources: Northern Ireland Listed Buildings database. workhouses.org .

DUNGANNON

Drumglass Hospital

South Tyrone Hospital, Carland Rd, Dungannon BT71 4AU

Now a community hospital, looks 1970s 6-storeys, concrete frame.

OMAGH

Omagh Hospital and Primary Care Complex

Opened 20 June 2017

Tyrone County Hospital

Occupied site from 1899. Closed 2017? Replaced by newly built Omagh Hospital and Primary Care Complex

Tyrone and Fermanagh Hospital

Former Omagh District Lunatic Asylum built in 1848-53 to designs by William Farrell of Dublin for the Irish Board of Works. Acute mental health inpatient service. [refs and sources: Northern Ireland Listed Buildings database.]

STRABANE

Derg Straben Hospital

External to Northern Ireland
The State Hospital is in Carstairs, South Lanarkshire, Scotland.

Non-NHS hospitals in Northern Ireland
Fitzwilliam Clinic, Belfast (founded 2004)
Hillsborough Clinic, Hillsborough
Kingsbridge Private Hospital, Belfast (2003)
North West Independent Hospital, Ballykelly
Ulster Independent Clinic, Belfast (founded in the 1980s?)