On 13 October 2016 the former Glen o’Dee Hospital was destroyed by fire. A few days later two 13-year-old boys were charged by the police in connection with the blaze.
Glen O’Dee Hospital photographed in 1990 by RCHAMS
Glen O’Dee was quite possibly the historic hospital that I most admired. The memory of stumbling across it, without knowing what to expect, has never quite lost its charm. Its future had for long been uncertain and the building lain empty since at least 1998, steadily deteriorating.
A new community hospital was built behind it in the 1990s, complicating plans for re-using the original building. Planning permission was granted in 2010 for redevelopment as housing, but nothing was done, and it remained on the register of Buildings at Risk in Scotland.
Glen O’Dee hospital photographed in 1990 by RCAHMS. The contrast with the photograph taken in 2012 is marked.
Glen O’Dee was the first Sanatorium to be built in Scotland on the fresh‑air principle. It was designed by George Coutts of Aberdeen and opened in 1900. It was constructed mainly of timber with a central tower of Hill of Fare granite. Balconies and verandas were provided for all the rooms, facing south across the Dee, and access corridors ran along the north side. The recreation pavilion added to the south‑east below the dining‑hall was built in the same style with windows running all around it.
Extract from the 2nd-edition 25-inch OS map, surveyed in 1902 showing the newly built sanatorium. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Stylistically it was closer to the sanatoria in Germany than any others that were subsequently built in Scotland. But it was also very similar to Mundesley Sanatorium, in Norfolk, which had opened the year before.
Glen O’Dee was originally called Nordrach‑on‑Dee, changing to Glen O’Dee when the building became a hotel for a time in 1934. It had been founded as a private sanatorium which treated TB on the Nordrach System pioneered at Nordrach in Baden, established in 1888 by Dr Otto Walther. This treatment mostly consisted of rest in the open air. Nordrach‑on‑Dee was founded by Dr David Lawson of Banchory, who had a distinguished career, pioneering work in the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis. Before the Hospital was built, much discussion took place as to the site. In 1899 Lawson published an article outlining the criteria and giving details of the eminent committee formed to acquire a suitable site. This committee consisted of, amongst others, Professors of Medicine from Aberdeen and Edinburgh Universities. According to their research Deeside’s record for minimum rainfall and maximum sunshine were favourable.
The Bremer Sanatorium at Gobersdorf was one of the most influential of the early hospitals pioneering open-air treatment of tuberculosis. From F. R. Walters, Sanatoria for Consumptives, 1899.
The site for Nordrach-on-Dee was purchased from Sir Thomas Burnett of Crathes for between £5,000 and £6,000. The building itself was estimated to cost £12,000. Initially there were 40 bedrooms though later additions were made. In 1928 Nordrach‑on‑Dee closed and was unused until its re‑opening as a luxurious hotel in 1934.
A postcard of the sanatorium from c.1910 from the RCAHMS collection
Brochures surviving in NHS Grampian Archives from both its incarnations give a similar picture of the regimes at the Sanatoria and Hotel. In the earlier document the text describes how each room was constructed so as to admit a maximum of pure sunlight and fresh air. ‘The windows occupy over two‑thirds of the outside wall space and are so arranged as to permit of their being kept open during all weathers.”
An old postcard of Glen-o-Dee Hospital, when it was still known as Nordrach-on-Dee, from the RCAHMS collection
It was one of the first sanatoria to use x‑rays in the treatment of TB. In 1941 the Hotel was requisitioned by the army and at the end of the war it was purchased by the Scottish Red Cross Society, who re‑fitted it as a sanatorium for ex‑service men and women suffering from TB. It was opened as such by the Queen in 1949.
Aerofilms photograph of Glen O’Dee hospital taken in 1950 from the RCAHMS collection
In 1955 it was transferred to the National Health Service and was latterly devoted to the care of geriatric patients. Two single‑storey ward blocks were constructed to the rear, the most recent on the site of the former nurses’ home. In 1990 Grampian Health Board had plans to demolish part of the original sanatorium. Whilst its timber construction made it understandable that the building presented difficulties with both maintenance and fire prevention, its undoubted historic importance makes its loss regrettable.
Selected Sources: Grampian Health Board Archives, booklets on Sanatorium and Hotel. The Hospital, 1 June 1901, p.152‑3]; BBC news, online report: NHS Grampian archives website has a history and images of the hospital
The future of this fine old building is under threat. It has stood empty for many years and there are fears that it may be demolished, despite its important place in the local history of Grantham and in the wider history of hospital architecture in England.
Postcard of the hospital c.1900
A day of public celebration, parade and partying accompanied the ceremony of laying the foundation stone of Grantham Hospital on 29 October 1874. The band of the Royal South Lincoln Militia lead a procession, followed by the architect and builder, local dignitaries, and interested parties, that marched from Grantham Guildhall to the site of the new hospital on the Manthorpe Road to the north of the town centre.
Countess Brownlow, who was closely associated with the project from its inception, conducted the actual ceremony, once she had listened to an address by the chairman of the building committee, a short service by the Vicar, and been presented with a silver trowel. A public luncheon was given at the Guildhall presided over by Earl Brownlow. Tickets for this event could be purchased for 2s 6d. Earl Brownlow and his wife donated funds towards the hospital and took an interest in the plans, and the Earl of Dysart gave £1,000 to the building fund. [Grantham Journal, 24 Oct 1874, p.4]
Extract from the 25-inch OS map, surveyed in 1885. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Extract from the 25-inch OS map, revised in 1903. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland. This shows extensions to the rear of the hospital and an additional block.
Grantham Cottage Hospital was designed by the London architect Richard Adolphus Came (1848-1919), who went on to lay out the development of Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire where he later settled, designing many of its buildings. He appears in the 1901 census as the proprietor of the Royal Hydro Hotel there. Came freely adapted a basic pavilion plan to create a picturesque elevation. Unusually, the wards were T-shaped, an arrangement which was commended by the great champion of hospital architecture in the late 19th century, Henry C. Burdett. He thought the wards were novel, pleasing and noteworthy, presenting a cheerful and airy appearance ‘which fills the visitor with pleasure’.[H. C. Burdett, Cottage Hospitals, 2nd edition 1880 p.412]
Baroness Brownlow also officiated at the official opening on 5 January 1876. ‘As it now stands approaching completion, the building with its neatly arranged grounds, and trim Gothic porch, forms a somewhat picturesque object’, reported the Grantham Journal.
The hospital, which is Gothic in character, is constructed of local stone with Ancaster dressings, and consists of three distinct blocks of buildings. The main building, which faces the road … is composed of a central block of two stories, providing a waiting-room, entrance lobby, surgeons’ sitting-room and operating-room, kitchen, offices and store-rooms, &c. on the ground floor; convalescent and board rooms, and four bedrooms on the first floor; and two bedrooms and lumber room in attics. There are wings stretching right and left of this block, forming the wards for male and female patients, and containing seven beds each, together with nurses’ room, bathroom, and other offices. The Gothic timber porch, which certainly contributes much to the appearance of the building, has been erected at the expense of the Earl Brownlow. Some distance in the rear of the main building, the fever hospital has been erected, and will contain five beds, bathroom, nurses’ room, kitchen &c., the working of this department being kept entirely separate from the other part of the hospital. A convenient laundry is also provided, with the addition of washing and ironing rooms, drying closet, and other similar accommodation. [Grantham Journal, 8 Jan 1876, p.4]
A major extension to Grantham Hospital was built in the mid-1930s to designs by the local architect F. J. Lenton, of Traylen & Lenton. The plans were approved by the British Hospitals Association, the Ministry of Health and the County Council. It was partly as a result of Kesteven County Council’s obligation to provide hospital accommodation that Grantham Hospital was extended, and the enlarged hospital was to take patients from the county as a whole. This raised the number of beds provided in the hospital from 33 to 76 initially. A new entrance was formed to the south of the original building. New ward blocks ‘of the latest verandah type’ were built for men, women and children. There was also separate provision for private patients, a new isolation block and operating theatre unit.
Architectural perspective of the extensions to Grantham Hospital by F. J. Lenton, architect
Verandah wards with folding windows, usually occupying the length of one side, originated in Denmark, and were introduced to England by Charles Ernest Elcock at the County Hospital, Hertford. Beds were placed parallel to the the side walls in groups of four, separated by glass partitions, instead of the old pattern in Nightingale-style wards where the beds were placed in rows at right-angles to the side walls. Each ward had five groups of four beds and two separate observation wards. The south-facing children’s ward had a paved terrace in front of the folding windows to allow cots to be wheeled out into the open air.
Verandah wards were hailed as revolutionizing hospital planning by providing improved access to fresh air and sunshine, and the psychological effect of smaller groups of beds (‘cosy communities’). It is interesting to note that the local paper praised the hospital for its functional design. ‘Rigid economy’ was observed in order to be able to provide the most up-to-date equipment: ‘In past days Hospitals were so often designed for external effect first and foremost’… ‘present-day designers always have in mind that their building should not be monumental, but sufficient for the present, and of a type that can be readily altered or adapted to the possible requirements of the future. [Grantham Journal, 27 Jan 1934, p.5]
In the new hospital, the private wards occupied a separate unit to the west of the complex which had its own enclosed garden. It had six private wards, with bedrooms for special nurses and separate ward kitchens. A subterranean boiler house was constructed at the edge of the site to provide heating and hot-water, operating on the panel-heating system by low pressure hot water, accelerated by electric pumps. All pipework was concealed in the ceilings. This was supplemented in the wards either with conventional open coal fires or gas fires. The building contractors for the extension were Bernard Pumphrey Ltd of Gainsborough. [Grantham Journal, 22 Sept 1934, p.5]
Extract from the 6-inch OS map, revised in 1938. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland. This shows the extension to the south of the hospital.
The new buildings were completed early in March 1935, after which the old hospital was refurbished to provide accommodation for the nursing and domestic staffs. At the same time a maternity unit was created in the old south ward wing of and the old theatre converted into a special labour ward. These alterations brought the hospital’s capacity up to 100 beds. [Nottingham Evening Post, 24 March 1936.]
Further additions were made following transfer to the NHS, including a new maternity unit which opened in 1972. Grantham Hospital has retained huge local support, as witnessed by the demonstrations that took place earlier this year to protest against the drastic reduction of the opening hours of the A&E department.
A short hop from the Bluewater shopping centre is the former Stone House Hospital, built in the 1860s as the City of London Pauper Lunatic Asylum. The hospital was closed in 2005, a process that had begun some years before, and the buildings remained empty and slowly deteriorating for around seven years before planning permission was given for the redevelopment of the site for housing.
Stone House Hospital, administration block, photographed in 1992.
The P. J. Livesey Group carried out the development. Listed building consent was granted in 2012 for the conversion of the main hospital range, the former superintendent’s house (the Hollies), coach-house and stable buildings to provide 93 dwellings and a private gym, change of use for the chapel to offices. Consent was also given for the demolition of the female infirmary, boiler house, laundry rooms, mortuary and associated buildings. A total of 260 residences were planned for the site.
Stone House Hospital, near Dartford in Kent, built as the City of London Pauper Lunatic Asylum and opened in 1866. Extract from the 2nd-edition OS Map revised in 1895, reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The Corporation of London dragged its heels over building a pauper lunatic asylum. They acquired a site at Stone near Dartford in Kent in 1859 from C. White Esq of Barnsfield. Plans were commissioned from the City Clerk of Works, J. B. Bunning. Arguments rumbled on over how big the asylum should be, or if it were needed at all, but after a few revisions of the plans, work finally began in 1862. Progress was painfully slow. With work still far from complete, Horace Jones replaced Bunning as City Architect in 1864. Jones supervised the completion of the building which was officially opened on 16 April 1866.
Engraved view of the City of London Asylum, 1866.
The year before the Visiting Committee reported that the furniture, bedding and general stores had, for the most part, been delivered. An arrangement had been made for the gas supply from Dartford, but the water supply was insufficient. The Committee recommended that patients should not be transferred to the new asylum until the spring, because of the ‘bleak and unsheltered situation of the asylum’. Committee members were also concerned that this bleakness also applied to the interior, where the walls were just ‘rough brickwork whitewashed from the ceiling to the floor’. They feared the contrast would make for an unpleasant change for the poor patients and called for walls to be painted or papered with a cheerful-coloured pattern.
Former Chelsea Ward. Photograph reproduced by kind permission of Peter Aitkenhead.
The City Asylum was contemporary with various second county asylums: Dorset, Surrey, Staffordshire, and Cheshire, and a number of other city asylums, such as Norwich, Newcastle and Bristol. Its plan demonstrated the refinements that were being introduced to the established corridor plan, having broader corridors, large day rooms and dormitories and fewer single rooms.
Stone House Hospital, former canteen. Photograph reproduced by kind permission of Peter Aitkenhead.
The asylum was extended many times following its completion, with new wings added in the 1870s, an isolation hospital in 1885 (the cottage hospital, now demolished), and extensive additions in the late 1890s.
Extract from the 25-inch OS Map revised in 1931, reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
A detached chapel (St Luke’s) was built to the north of the main hospital range in 1898-1901 to designs by Andrew Murray. The original chapel, which was at the heart of the main building above the dining-hall, was then converted into a recreation room ‘for concerts, dancing and theatrical amusements’. Whereas the site of the asylum had been described as bleak and unsheltered in the 1860s, it was now commended as being ‘notable for its salubrity’, commanding a view of the Thames and a charming rural panorama.
Stone House Hospital chapel, photographed in 1992.
Stone House Hospital chapel, photographed in 1992.
Stone House Hospital Chapel, west window. Photograph reproduced by kind permission of Peter Aitkenhead.
Sources and References:
The surviving archives of the hospital are in the London Metropolitan Archives – ref: CLA/001: Gravesend Reporter, North Kent and South Essex Advertiser, 31 March 1860 p.4 : London City Press, 16 Dec 1865 p.3: Illustrated Times, 31 March 1866, p.205: Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 19 June 1898, p.1: Building Design, 23 July 2010, 4: Lost Hospitals of London: P. J. Livesey Group website: Parliamentary Papers, Reports of the Commissioners in Lunacy.
Napsbury Hospital, photographed in 1992. In the centre is the dining hall, with ward blocks on either side.
This leafy residential development near St Albans, within sight of the M25, has been established on the site of Napsbury Hospital, incorporating many of the former hospital buildings. Re-named Napsbury Park, the development took place largely between 2002 and 2008.
The south side of the dining hall, photographed in 1992.
The asylum was designed by Rowland Plumbe in 1900 to serve the county of Middlesex. Following the Local Government Act of 1889 and the formation of the London County Council, the former Middlesex County Asylums at Hanwell and Colney Hatch were taken over by the LCC, while the former Surrey County Asylum in Wandsworth (Springfield Hospital) was transferred to Middlesex. The need for a new institution was soon recognized and in 1898 the estate of Napsbury Manor Farm was acquired. In the same year the architect Rowland Plumbe and the Medical Superintendent of Springfield Hospital, Dr Gardiner-Hill, visited asylums in Scotland where a new type of asylum plan was evolving, inspired by the continental colony system.
Map showing the former asylum as first designed, with the large échelon-plan main complex on the left, the separate acute hospital to its right, farm buildings on the north side, an isolation hospital to the left and in amongst these, the five detached villas and a chapel.
Plumbe’s design that he presented to the County’s Asylums Committee introduced elements from the Scottish system, such as the separate hospital section and detached villas, as well as a typical English-style échelon-plan main complex. In part this was a necessary compromise, as English asylums tended to be considerably larger than their Scottish counterparts and so detached colony-sytle buildings for all patients were uneconomic – Napsbury was designed for 1,152 patients.
Postcard of Napsbury Hospital, unknown date. Reproduced courtesy of Peter Aitkenhead. The conical-roofed structure in the middle ground was one of the garden shelters that were provided in the gardens attached to each ward block.
The foundation stone was laid on 26 February 1901; the building contractors were Charles Wall Ltd of Chelsea, a firm with considerable experience in hospital construction. An arrangement was made with the Midland Railway Company to provide a station on the Company’s line, to the north west. A branch line was constructed from there directly to the heart of the main asylum complex, with sidings near the boiler house for bringing in coal.
Extract from the 25-inch OS map, revised in 1922, showing part of the Napsbury Hospital site with the Napsbury Siding shown coming into the site past the farm, by the chapel and arriving at the boiler house, stores and kitchens.
William Goldring was commissioned to design the landscape setting, having earlier been brought in to take over the landscape design for Kesteven Asylum (later Rauceby Hospital) near Sleaford. The OS map below shows the network of curved paths amongst trees and shrubs laid out around the main complex.
Extract from the 1922 25-inch OS map showing the main complex. The female side was on the west (left-hand side); it was considerably larger than the male side as female patients outnumbered males.
Each ward block had its own garden area in front, and picturesque circular shelters were provided, as focal points and providing somewhere to sit.
One of the thatched, circular garden shelters, photographed in 1992, in a state of disrepair.
As well as garden grounds, there was a cricket pitch with pavilion on the south side of the main complex.
The Arts & Crafts-style, thatched cricket pavilion, photographed in 1992 (since demolished).
On 3 June 1905 the new asylum opened. The main complex provided accommodation for 650 patients, its dog-leg échelon plan allowing for a higher proportion of female patients to males. Patient ward blocks, designed as far as possible in the style of large detached villas, were linked by single-storey corridors, and each block was allocated to a different class of patient depending on their diagnosis. In the terminology of the time these were: sick, infirm, epileptic, chronic, chronic refractory and working patients.
View along one of the main corridors. The characteristic brown-glazed bricks are probably the original finish – hard wearing and easily cleaned. Photographed in 1992.
Each ward block comprised day rooms, dormitories and single rooms for the patients in addition to attendants’ rooms. These were floored with pitch pine coated with ‘Ronuk’ polish. Doulton and Company’s faience open fires, supplemented by hot-water radiators, provided the heating, and the sanitary annexes, containing the baths, wash basins and WCs, were separated from the main patient areas by cross ventilated corridors in the usual manner.
One of the male ward blocks, photographed in 1992
The ward blocks each had a fire escape and goods lift and were designed so that any outbreak of fire could not spread to the adjacent blocks. As part of this fire-proof construction, the main stairs were of cement concrete with York stone treads.
Ward interior, probably dating from the First World War. Reproduced courtesy of Peter Aitkenhead.
A large common dining hall was situated at the centre, dividing the male and female sides of the complex. To the north of the dining hall was the kitchen, kitchen offices and stores. On the male side were the boiler house, workshops and water tower. The laundry was on the female side.
The water tower and the service area of the main complex comprising boiler house, kitchens, stores and workshops. Photographed in 1992.
On the north, counterbalancing the dining hall, was the administration block. This imposing gabled building of two storeys had a squat square tower over the main hall and a stubby porte-cochère before the main entrance. It contained the committee rooms, offices and quarters for the assistant medical officers.
Administration block on the north side of the main complex, photographed in 1992
The separate hospital for admissions and cases requiring observation and medical treatment was situated to the east of the main asylum complex and was completely detached from it and independent, except for a subway carrying steam pipes. It had its own water supply, laundry, kitchen, dining and recreation hall.
Main entrance of the former hospital section, photographed in 1992
The administration block was on the north side, in a similar style with a multi-gabled façade and mullion and transomed windows. It was of two storeys and attic with a central entrance leading to the main entrance hall and fernery. In addition to office accommodation, it also contained rooms for photography, a museum and research laboratory. The hospital provided 250 beds in single-storey ward blocks. Convalescent and nursing cases occupied the blocks on the south side, the sick and infirm those to the east and west.
One of the detached villas, photographed in 1992. View from the east of one of the pair of villas built for working female patients to the north west of the main asylum complex. These were altered, extended and linked together by a single storey range to the south. They have not been retained in the redevelopment of the site.
Dotted about the park were five detached villas, these were originally designed to accommodate working patients, convalescent patients soon to be discharged and private patients (‘paying guests and artisans’). Each could house fifty or fifty-two patients, sleeping in small dormitories, with sitting rooms and dining rooms.
Detached villa, photographed 1992. This was the farm villa, designed for male, working patients. It has not been retained as part of the redevelopment of the site.
There was also a small isolation hospital, on the edge of the site near the railway line, with its own separate services. It was extended in the 1920s and 30s. Other ancillary buildings included a post-mortem department, medical officer’s house, staff housing, chapel and farm buildings. The company of Gillett & Johnston (bellfounders) cast four bells for the chapel, probably for a clock with three Quarter bells and an Hour. See the note at the end of this post for the specifications for the bells, which were cast in 1903 and 1904.
Former isolation hospital, photographed in 1992
Only a few years after the hospital opened Rowland Plumbe was asked to prepare plans for additions and alterations – accommodation was needed for another 600 patients and improvements had to be made to the drainage.
Napsbury War Hospital, First World War. Reproduced by courtesy of Peter Aitkenhead
During the First World War the hospital was taken over by the Army. By 1915 the Army had realised that it needed considerably more accommodation for those suffering from ‘war strain’, and entered into negotiations with Middlesex County for the use of parts of its asylums at Wandsworth and Napsbury. The acute hospital at Napsbury and two of the villas (for convalescents) were transferred to the Army in 1916. Napsbury War Hospital provided 350 beds and was allocated to the severest cases. In May of the same year, the remainder of Napsbury Hospital was also handed over to the Army for general medical and surgical cases, with 1,600 beds for soldiers invalided home from the front.
Napsbury War Hospital, First World War, photograph showing patients and staff. Reproduced courtesy of Peter Aitkenhead.
The largest addition to the site after the First World War was a new nurses’ home built to the south of the main complex and west of the cricket ground.
Former Nurses’ Home built in the 1920, photographed in 1992
By the early 1920s one of the detached villas, that nearest the hospital section, had been taken over as a nurses’ home.
When we visited the site in 1992 as part of the RCHME Hospitals Survey it was still a hospital for those suffering from mental illnesses. The staff were very welcoming, allowing us to go over the site and photograph the outsides of the buildings, although one person was disturbed by the sight of the camera (the phrase ‘tupenny-ha’penny photographer’ was thrown in our direction).
The hospital closed in 1998, although a small psychiatric unit remained on site until around 2002. The grounds were designated by English Heritage as a Grade II historic park in 2001, recognizing the importance of this rare survival of a public landscape designed by William Goldring. The hospital buildings were listed, also Grade II, in 1998. Crest Nicholson acquired the site in about 2002. Around 545 residences have been created in a mix of apartments in the converted buildings alongside new detached and terraced houses the masterplan and detailed designs were drawn up by Design Group 3 architects. Much has been demolished – all the service buildings at the core of the main asylum complex, apart from the water tower, the ward blocks of the hospital section and some of the villas, but the footprint has been retained – paths or roads replacing the distinctive corridor that linked together the ward blocks. The new buildings have been designed to match the old in the use of warm orange-red brick, and in style they take their cue from Rowland Plumbe’s buildings. Generally it is one of the better examples of the re-use of a former asylum complex.
References
The Builder, 31 August 1901, p.198; 17 June 1905, pp.651-2; 1 Feb. 1908, p.127: Building News, 2 June 1905, p.780: Hertford Library, H362.11, brochure for the opening of Middlesex County Asylum: PP XXVIII.381 c.899, 1920, History of the Asylum War Hospitals in England and Wales
Note on the Gillett & Johnston bells
Gillett & Johnston (bellfounders) records, they cast four bells for Napsbury Asylum Chapel, then in Middlesex. They appear to be a clock with three Quarter bells and an Hour. The motor might also be by G&J. The details of these bells are below:
Serial No1914; 24″diameter; Weight 2cwt 3qrs 8lbs; Cast 12/1903.
Serial No1877; 28″diameter; Weight 4cwt 1qr 14lbs; Cast 02/1903.
Serial No1931; 29 1/2″diameter; Weight 4cwt 3qrs 21lbs; Cast 03/1904.
Serial No1932; 34″diameter; Weight 7cwt 1qr 6lbs; Cast 03/1904.
Information from the Gillett & Johnston records kindly supplied by Alan Buswell.
See also
There are more photographs on the County Asylums website. St Albans out of sight out of mind for more photographs, and memories of working at the hospital. Lost Hospitals of London has further photographs, history and references. Crest Nicholson’s brochure and advertising for the redeveloped nurses’ home (Napsbury Quarters) can be found on their website. More information on William Goldring can be found on the Parks and Gardens website.
Postcard of Storthes Hall Asylum, Kirkburton, West Yorkshire when newly built. Reproduced courtesy of Peter Aitkenhead.
Storthes Hall was the fourth, and last, pauper lunatic asylum for the West Riding of Yorkshire. The first section, designed as an acute hospital, opened in June 1904. This was similar to the earlier acute block added to the Wakefield asylum in 1899. Only the gate lodge and the administration block of this section now survive, the remainder of the buildings providing the footprint for Huddersfield University’s student village that now occupies the site. The larger section to the south-west (pictured above), has also been demolished with just the administration block remaining in a ruinous state.
Detail from the 6-inch OS map, revised in 1904-5. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
The West Riding Asylums Committee decided to build their fourth pauper lunatic institution around 1897 and purchased Storthes Hall, together with a large part of the estate, from Thomas Norton in 1898. By January 1899 the county surveyor, Joseph Vickers Edwards, had visited the most recent asylums built in England and Scotland and presented a report to the Asylums Committee. The Commissioners in Lunacy advised that they would not approve an asylum designed on the village or colony principle, a type that was emerging as an ideal form for mental hospitals around this time. They agreed to sanction plans for the acute hospital provided that it was entirely separate from the general asylum complex. Originally this section was to have 200 beds (100 each of male and female patients), the general asylum was to accommodate 1,200 patients and be capable of enlargement. [1]
Interior of one of the broad corridors of the asylum which served as day-room space. Reproduced courtesy of Peter Aitkenhead.
The acute hospital was symmetrically arranged with two blocks or wards on either side of the central administrative section, each for 50 patients, one for sick and infirm, the other for recent or acute cases. Flanking the hospital were two detached blocks, or ‘cottage homes’, designed to house 36 chronic, healthy patients each, who would form part of the labour force for the asylum. [2] To the south-west of the acute hospital was the central boiler house and laundry, with laundry residence, these sections were constructed in 1902-3 by John Radcliffe & Sons, Huddersfield (acute hospital) and William Nicholson & Sons, Leeds (laundry and boiler house). [3] The rest of the complex was commenced in 1904 once the acute hospital was completed, with Radcliffe & Sons as the building contractors.
Extract from the 1:25,000 OS map published in 1955. The acute hospital is to the north, the boiler house and laundry section centrally place and the large echelon-plan complex was for general cases. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Joseph Vickers Edwards, who designed the asylum, was the County Architect. He also designed High Royds Hospital, the third West Riding asylum, in 1885 (built in 1887-9), and the hospital blocks at Scalebor Park, which opened in 1902 as an asylum for paying patients. Edwards was born in Liverpool around 1852, and trained as a civil engineer. He had been the borough engineer for Burnley before he was appointed as the deputy surveyor and architect to the West Riding in the late 1870s under Bernard Hartley. As County Architect he initially had responsibility for roads and bridges as well as all the other local authority buildings. He designed a number of public and council buildings: additions to County Hall, the police headquarters at Wakefield, the teacher-training college at Bingley, and inebriates’ reformatory at Cattal. He was remembered as a genial man, popular with his staff and ‘moderately fond’ of sports – mostly cricket. [4]
Postcard of Storthes Hall Asylum, showing the admin block of the general asylum. Reproduced courtesy of Peter Aitkenhead.
Later additions to the site included: 1909 post-mortem room; 1915 isolation hospital; 1934 tenders for Assistant Medical Officers residence, W. H. Burton, architect; 1935 Clerk of Works house, extension to the nurses’ home also by Burton; 1939 Medical Superintendent’s house.
The admin block of the general asylum, photographed after the rest of the huge asylum complex around it had been demolished. By Bilko123 at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Small-town hero, Public Domain.
Storthes Hall itself, a private house to the north east of the hospital site, was used as an institution for the mentally handicapped, and was known as the Mansion Hospital. After it closed in 1991 it reverted to a private residence. In 2005 outline planning permission was granted for building a retirement community on the site of the former general asylum complex. An extension to the time limit was granted in 2012, considerable delays had ensued with arguments over the inclusion of affordable housing in the scheme. Revised plans were approved in 2016 which include converting the derelict admin block into a residential care home.
Detail from an early postcard of Storthes Hall Asylum, probably dating from around the time of the completion of the buildings in the early twentieth century. Reproduced courtesy of Peter Aitkenhead.
For more images of the asylum and details of its history see highroydshospital.com, the website for Storthes Hall Park student accommodation has photographs, mostly interiors, of the Huddersfield University’s student village. Historic England Archives holds a file on the hospital, ref: BF102003. Recent bird’s-eye aerial photography of the site can be seen on Bing.com/maps.
Select references:
Huddersfield Chronicle, 12 Jan 1899, p.4
Huddersfield Chronicle, 5 July 1900, p.3: Building News, 21 July 1900, p.61
Leeds Mercury, 1o Oct 1901, p.2
Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 6 May 1913, p.7
Practically no trace now remains of Belvidere Hospital, a large housing estate having been built on the site. The Belvidere once played a key role in protecting the population of Glasgow from the ravages of infectious diseases, including smallpox. The hospital was built on the most up-to-date plan, and took shape over a prolonged period of construction beginning with temporary wooden huts that were later replaced by brick buildings.
Epidemics of infectious diseases were amongst the major threats to life to the urban poor, living in the overcrowded districts of the rapidly expanding and industrialising city. Although the parochial authorities made some provision for paupers, this was very limited and strictly speaking only paupers were eligible for admission. From 1862 local responsibility for public health in Glasgow rested with the Board of Police, and it was under their auspices that a temporary fever hospital was built in Parliamentary Road in 1865. Proximity to the centre of population and a restricted site rendered the hospital inadequate in the face of a severe epidemic of relapsing fever in 1870. As a result, Belvidere House and its 33 acre estate were purchased to provide a site for a permanent fever hospital.
Low Belvidere House and grounds in the 1850s, later the site of Belvidere Hospital. Extract from OS Town Plan of Glasgow, 1857. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The original house was built by John M’Call, a leading merchant of Glasgow, who died there in 1790. It then passed to his son-in-law Robert M’Nair, a sugar-refiner, who sold up in 1813 to Mungo Nutto Campbell. Campbell sold it on around 1820 to David Wardrop who exploited the coal on the estate, and over the following decades the house and grounds were passed from one industrialist to another. (See The Glasgow Story for more on the history of the house and a photograph by Thomas Annan taken in 1870.)
Detail of the 1st Edition OS Map, surveyed in 1858, showing Belvidere House. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
John Carrick, the Glasgow City Architect, was responsible for drawing up plans for the new hospital. The first ‘ temporary shed’ was occupied on 19 December 1870. Eight timber pavilions were planned, four had been finished and partially occupied by Christmas, and two were expected to be completed before New Year.
In 1871 it was decided to build a separate smallpox hospital at Belvidere. Great lengths were taken to ensure that the most up-to-date features were incorporated in the design and many other hospitals were visited to this end, including the Herbert Hospital in London ‘reputed to be the finest specimen of a pavilion hospital in existence’. The local press had called for the design of the new hospital to reflect ‘the experience and results of modern science’, hoping that the authorities would not adopt the ‘old style of building tall structures’ but rather would follow the model of the recent temporary blocks at Parliamentary Road built on the pavilion principle ‘so strongly advocated by Miss Nightingale, and by writers on the subject of hospital accommodation’. The ‘temporary’ hospital blocks at Parliamentary Road were anticipated to last for around twenty years. There were those in the medical profession who considered that after occupation for that period of time all hospitals should be remodelled, if not entirely razed and rebuilt.
Nothing seems to have been done immediately but in 1874 plans were drawn up for the new permanent structures. Five single-storey, brick ward pavilions were built, though still described as ‘partially erected ‘ in December 1875, as well as the necessary ancillary buildings. These works were completed in 1877. The pavilions were aligned roughly north-south, and each was divided into four wards, two for acute cases in the centre, two for convalescents at the ends. The flooring was of close-jointed oak, the inner walls coated with Keen’s cement and the wards warmed by hot-water pipes and open fires. Roof-ridge ventilators (Boyle’s) were a distinctive feature on the outside of the buildings.
To the south-east was a large wash-house. Matrons’ and medical superintendent’s houses and dormitories for the nurses occupied a position at the north-east corner of the grounds, close to which was the morgue. The original kitchen block stood opposite the north end of the central pavilion, it was surmounted by a small spire, which also served as a bell tower and clock. It was designed to minimise contact between the kitchen staff and the nurses: a platform under a verandah on the southern side of the kitchen allowed the nurses to receive the food which was served through a window.
Bartholomew’s New Plan of Glasgow… 1882. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The grounds were laid out into plots of shrubs and flowers by Mr M’Lellan, the Superintendent of Glasgow city parks. The team working alongside the architect were James Hannah, clerk of works; John Porter, builder; William Lightbody, joiner; Robert Nelson, plasterer; Wallace & Allan, plumbers and gas-fitters; John M’Ouatt & Sons, slaters; and James Comb & Son, heating engineers.
In 1879 work began on permanent buildings to replace the temporary sheds of the fever hospital on the south-east side of the site. Four brick pavilions were built to begin with. In 1882 the Medical Officer for Health in Glasgow, J. B. Russell, produced a ‘Memorandum on the Hospital Accommodation for Infectious Diseases in Glasgow’, which resulted in the further expansion of the site. Russell’s memorandum itemised the requirements for a large infectious diseases hospital and considered various details of its construction.
Over the course of the next five years pavilion after pavilion was added until there were thirteen altogether, providing 26 wards and a capacity for 390 patients. In addition there were ancillary buildings, providing kitchens and laundries etc, so that the hospital was as self-sufficient as possible, thus limiting the number of visitors to the site. The extended hospital was officially opened on 4 March 1887.
Extract from the 2nd edition OS map, revised 1892-3. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The simple polychrome of thin, horizontal bands of white amongst the red bricks created a streaky bacon effect. This unusual construction for hospital buildings in Scotland gave them a utilitarian air reminiscent of Glasgow’s industrial buildings.
Aerial photograph taken in 1952, from Britain from Above. The river Clyde is in the foreground, the smallpox hospital to the left and fever hospital to the right.
In contrast to the polychrome-brick of most of the buildings, stone was used for the large administration block, which also contained the nurses home, recreation hall and senior staff residences. It was a large, somewhat austere building erected on the site of the original Belvidere house. The central range was designed as an echo of the house it replaced.
In 1929 a house was provided for the Medical Superintendent and a new observation ward was opened in 1930. After the inception of the National Health Service in 1948 various additions were made and changes in function introduced. Two important developments at Belvidere were the opening of the first Cobalt Therapy Unit in Scotland in February 1961 and in March 1973, the opening of the second Neutron Therapy Unit in Britain.
The hospital closed in 1999. After years of neglect the derelict buildings were mostly demolished in 2006 – all except the administration block and nurses’ home. Hypostyle Architects acting for Kier Homes Ltd designed the masterplan for the site development. Divided into three zones: high density urban blocks, urban terraced housing, and low density sub-urban housing. The high density section nearest the London Road comprises four-storey blocks of flats and three-storey town houses. The terraced housing, of two stories, creates a buffer zone between the flats and the low-density housing on the south side of the site. Original plans to convert the listed admin block were subsequently scrapped and permission granted to demolish the remaining shell of the central block for more low-density housing. The original master plan was for 351 residential units: 145 flats, 115 townhouses and 91 houses.
Sources:
Glasgow Herald, 24 Dec 1870 p.3;22 Nov 1875, p.5;3 July 1877 p.2; 5 March 1887, p.9: Strathclyde Regional Archives: Account of Proceedings at Inspection of New Hospital for Infectious Diseases erected at Belvidere, 1877: J. B. Russell, ‘Memorandum on the Hospital Accommodation for Infectious Diseases in Glasgow’, 1882: ‘Report of proceedings at Official Inspection…’, 1887 Corporation of City of Glasgow, Municipal Glasgow, Glasgow, 1914: The Builder, 4 Dec 1875, p.1083; British Architect, 22 July 1887, p.70: Hypostyle Architects website
Greenock in the mid-eighteenth century, depicted on Roy’s map of the Highlands. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The dark, austere tower block that is Inverclyde Hospital opened in 1979. It superseded the Greenock Royal Infirmary, Eye Infirmary, Gateside Hospital, Duncan Macpherson and Broadstone Jubilee Hospitals which were all disposed of by the local Health Board in 1982. It was built just to the north of Larkfield Hospital, and that too was later replaced by the present Larkfield Unit. Later the last of Greenock’s pre-war hospitals, the Rankin Memorial, also closed and has since been demolished. This post gives a brief account of Greenock’s past hospitals, mostly demolished but a couple still stand in other use. Information on the lunatic asylum, poorhouses, and hospitals nearby can be found on the Inverclyde page of this website. Grateful thanks must go to the McLean Museum and Inverclyde Archives for kindly allowing me to use images from their online collections website (which I highly recommend).
Though Inverclyde hospital is perhaps not the most heart-warming in terms of architectural delight, Greenock can nevertheless be proud of its historic hospitals and of the people who built, funded, staffed and administered them. The earliest of these now-lost hospitals was the Royal Infirmary in Inverkip Street.
Postcard of the infirmary, probably early 20th century. Reproduced by permission of the McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Inverclyde Council
A dispensary had been established for the sick poor in 1801, but an outbreak of fever in 1806, the source of which was thought to be the crew of a Russian prize-vessel brought into the harbour that year, demonstrated the limitations of the dispensary and the necessity for a hospital. Plans for establishing an infirmary were put in train in 1807, the foundation stone was laid in 1808, and the building opened on 14 June 1809 – the dispensary becoming part of the new infirmary. In most instances the first generation of voluntary hospitals built in Scottish towns were designed by local architects. Greenock was no exception, although John Aird, who furnished the plans, was the local harbour engineer rather than an architect per se and it appears to be the only known building that he designed.
Greenock, from John Wood’s plan of the town of 1825, showing the new streets laid out for development in grids around the old town. These were said to be ‘filling up with rapidity’ at the time of Wood’s survey, although neither Macfarlane’s map of 1842, or the first edition OS map of 1857, bear this out. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
The original infirmary was a good size for the time and the size of the town, providing 32 beds. Sir John Shaw Stewart, Lord of the Manor, gave the site, originally on the outskirts of the town, and the building costs amounted to around £1,815. It operated as a voluntary hospital funded by subscriptions, and was intended for cases of fever as well as general medical or surgical cases. Additional ground was given in 1815 to provide a larger airing ground or garden.
Wood’s Map
The image above shows a detail of Wood’s map, the infirmary is marked by the letter ‘n’ and is towards the bottom left of the map. To its north ‘o’ marks the United Session Church and ‘p’ is the Greenock brewery. Further to the east ‘r’ marks the relief chapel and ‘s’ the tabernacle. On the right hand side are the bridewell – ‘x’ and the Renfrewshire bank – ‘y’. At the top ‘c’ is the gaelic chapel. All this can be seen much more clearly on the National Library Maps collection site, which also has a link to the description of Greenock that accompanied Wood’s Atlas.
Detail from Andrew Macfarlane’s map of Greenock of 1842. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Extract from the OSTown Plan, 1857. The small building to the south was the wash house and dead house. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Outbreaks of fever (i.e. an infectious disease) remained common in this harbour town, and were often severe. In 1829 the hospital was stretched beyond its capacity during an epidemic, resulting in the erection of a temporary fever hospital and plans made to extend the building. Two wings were added in 1830. By the mid-1840s the capacity of the infirmary had been increased to around 100 beds. An extraordinary number for the building depicted in the 1857 OS map (above).
Late-nineteenth century lantern slide of Greenock Infirmary and Duncan Street cemetery. Reproduced by permission of the McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Inverclyde Council
Additions were made in 1847 (James Dempster architect), and in 1869 the infirmary was enlarged (James Salmon & Son, architect). Further additions in 1938-43 by W. J. B. Wright included a nurses’ home.
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map, surveyed 1896. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
One of the specialisms that developed at the infirmary was the treatment of diseases of the eye. In 1865 James Ferguson, merchant of Inverkip, had bequeathed £6,000 to provide an eye hospital but legal action ensued and it was not until 1879 that the trustees rented a consulting room in Greenock Infirmary and in the following year appointed an oculist. At last the Eye Infirmary was built in 1893 on Nelson Street.
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map, revised in 1912, showing the eye infirmary to the west of the County Court and prison. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The Eye Infirmary was designed by James B. Stewart with funds donated by Mr Anderson Rodger, a Port Glasgow ship builder. It also catered for ear, nose and throat patients until 1921. It is a handsome building, and survives, latterly as the Ardgowan Hospice.
Opening ceremony of the Eye Infirmary on Nelson Street, Greenock on the 19th August 1893. Reproduced by permission of the McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Inverclyde Council
Atmospheric colour slide of the Eye Infirmary taken in 1971 by Eugene Jean Méhat (1920-2000). Reproduced by permission of the McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Inverclyde Council
Public Health legislation in the late nineteenth century eventually made the provision of municipal hospitals for infectious diseases compulsory. For Greenock this resulted in the erection of Gateside Hospital, otherwise known as the Greenock and District Combination Hospital for infectious diseases. Built well outside the town, it was designed by Alexander Cullen of Hamilton and opened in 1908.
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map, revised 1912. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
With the decline in need for hospitals for infectious diseases Gateside took on orthopaedic surgery, paediatric medicine and general medicine, before finally closing in 1979, superseded by Inverclyde Hospital.
Postcard of the combination hospital, Greenock. Possibly the most surprising hospital to find a postcard of, made even more bizarre with the MacGregor tartan and lucky heather.
A photograph of the nurses with Miss Gay, Matron to the left of Dr Phillips, taking tea in front of the hospital. A poignant scene, given the year 1913. Reproduced by permission of the McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Inverclyde Council
The photograph above shows the matron Miss Margaret Russell Gay, seated to the left of Dr Phillips. She was matron at Gateside for over 25 years, having been appointed when the hospital first opened. From Greenock, she trained at Greenock Royal Infirmary, and before taking up her appointment at Gateside was matron at Largs hospital. She also spent time in America as a private nurse, and was in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake. She died in 1941 aged about 70.
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map revised in 1938. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
A Children’s Convalescent Home was built c.1900 on the edge of the smart western suburb of Greenock, on the corner of South and Forsyth Streets. It was opened by Mrs Andrew Carnegie – who had gifted £500 towards the home – in October 1902. It was still running during the Second World War. The building survives, now as private housing.
During the inter-war years Greenock’s hospital services increased greatly, but just before the end of the First World War, in 1917, Togo House was presented to the burgh of Greenock by Baillie Daniel Orr for use as a maternity hospital. This house was presumably on the site of present-day Togo Place, just off Dempster Road near the corner with Ann Street. It only had space for six patients, but in 1925 plans were approved to build a single-storey extension that would provide a proper maternity ward with 18 beds, and turn the house itself over to office and administrative use.
It was during this period that a convalescent home was built in association with the Royal Infirmary at Larkfield. Designed by Abercrombie & Maitland, it opened on 21 December 1929. At the opening ceremony, a Birmingham-made ceremonial silver key in a gold-coloured casket was presented to Miss Maggie Donald Rankin. The casket and key are now in the McLean Museum and Inverclyde Archives. Miss Rankin and her brother, Mathew, were major benefactors of Greenock. Mathew Rankin was partner in the local firm Rankin and Blackmore, engineers.
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map, revised in 1938. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
The home provided two, ten‑bed wards and eighteen private rooms. By 1943 it had become an auxiliary hospital treating all medical cases. It has considerable historic importance in terms of the development of hospital planning after the Second World War for having the first experimental ward designed by the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust, built in 1951-6, and followed by one in Belfast at Musgrave Park built in 1956-9. The Trust began to develop a new type of ward unit in the early years after the war, looking abroad for inspiration where the old Nightingale style wards had made way for groups of patients’ rooms on one side of a corridor with ancillary facilities on the other – bathrooms, treatment rooms, sluice rooms etc. The Trust studied the daily routine of nurses and aimed to devise a new layout that would reduce the amount of walking for nurses, improve privacy for patients but not lose the necessary level of supervision of patients by the nursing staff. The ward unit that they came up with still provided a basic 32 beds (about the size of the largest Nightingale ward) but arranged with a combination of four-bed bays and single rooms on either side of a central corridor. (An illustration can be seen on the University of Cambridge School of Architecture website, and a plan is reproduced in Jonathan Hughes’ article in Medical History.)
Larkfield Hospital closed in 1979. That same year the new Inverclyde Royal Hospital was opened, built just to the north-west. The Larkfield unit for geriatric patients has since been built on the site.
Two more hospitals were built in Greenock in the later 1930s. The Ear, Nose & Throat Hospital in Eldon Street wasbuilt in 1937 by James Miller. It originally had accommodation for 20 beds and an out‑patients’ department. Eear nose and throat patients were initially taken into the Royal Infirmary and then moved out to the Eye Infirmary when it opened in 1894. In 1921 the old prison buildings in Nelson Street were acquired as a temporary measure until the new hospital was provided in Eldon Street. The Eldon Street hospital was demolished some time after 1990 and has been replaced by blocks of flats.
Housing has also been built on the site of the Rankin Memorial Hospital. This hospital opened on 17 August 1938 replacing the Togo House Maternity Hospital and the children’s hospital at Shaw Place (about the latter, I have found no information). Maggie Donald Rankin donated £41,000 to build and equip the new combined hospital.
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map, revised in 1938. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The architect was James Watson Ritchie, for H.M. Office of Works. It was designed as a long low, two‑storey building in three sections with maternity to the west and children to the east of the central administration section. All the blocks were rough‑cast. There was accommodation for 28 women and 28 children, and the 13 1/2-acre site was laid out by Greenock Corporation Parks Department.
A ceremonial silver key, made by Hendry & Co. of Birmingham, England, was presented to Miss Rankin on the opening of the hospital by the Burgh of Greenock Corporation. Like the other key presented to her on the opening of Larkfield Hospital, it has been preserved in the McLean Museum and Inverclyde Archives.
Following transfer to the National Health Service in 1948 plans were drawn up for extensions and a nurses’ home, and a special baby-care unit designed in 1979 by Ross, Doak and Whitelaw. The Rankin closed in 1994. (There was also a Rankine Memorial Hospital, established around 1901, in Yichang, China, named after Dr David Rankine, its founder. The nursing staff were deaconesses from the Church of Scotland.)
Sources: Greenock Royal Infirmary: Dictionary of Scottish Architects: The New Statistical Account of Scotland: Renfrew, Argyle… 1845, pp 474-6. Gateside Hospital:Common Services Agency, Glasgow, plans collection: Glasgow Herald, 29 Dec 1941, p.6. Greenock Eye Infirmary: F. Walker, South Clyde Estuary, Edinburgh, 1986. Togo House Maternity Hospital: Glasgow Herald, 20 May 1925, p.6. Ear, Nose & Throat Hospital: Architect & Building News, 1937. Rankin Memorial Hospital: McLean Museum and Inverclyde Archives: Dictionary of Scottish Architects: The Builder, 23 Jan 1948, p.125; 27 Feb 1948, p.264; 11 Jan 1952, p.101; 30 April 1934, p.786: The Scotsman, 18 Aug 1938, p.6: Aberdeen Journal, 2 May 1907, p.3 for the Chinese Rankin Memorial Hospital.
I was delighted to receive three booklets this week from an ongoing series produced by the History of Highland Hospitals project set up in 2008. The first to be published was The Hospitals of Skye in 2011. Written by Jim Leslie and his son Steve, this slim volume provides a detailed history of the seven hospitals known to have existed on the island: the Skye Poorhouse, Portree and Ross Memorial Hospitals in Portree; Gesto Hospital, Edinbane; Martin Memorial Hospital, Uig; Mackinnon Memorial Hospital, Broadford, and a tiny smallpox hospital at Stein.
The buildings have been thoroughly researched, there are plentiful illustrations and the text is fully referenced with end-notes and footnotes. The stories of the hospitals and the poorhouse are written engagingly with an emphasis on their social history. This is mostly concerned with the staff and founders of the hospitals, but there are also details of patient numbers, including the detail that Gesto Hospital, in 1912, was reported as being full, and amongst the patients was a Welsh tramp with a broken leg in the attic.
I have had an enjoyable weekend up-dating the entries on the Highlands page of this website, adding in new information and correcting a few errors that I had made. Portree hospital, pictured above, had been extended since I visited it in the 1980s. It was built in the 1960s, and had a wonderful almost Art Deco-style bowed entrance porch with a port-hole window, but this has been altered and its character lost (I don’t think portholes on the door make up for the loss). Otherwise it is an endearing building and an early example of an entirely new NHS hospital.
The Gesto Hospital closed in 2007 and has stood empty ever since. As Carol Walker comments on her photograph above – what a pity! I hadn’t realised that the harling was not original – the book contains a photograph of the building from the 1920s (it is also on the front cover of the book) showing the exposed masonry with its neat cherry-caulking. As to the Stein Smallpox Hospital, that was completely new to me – a prefabricated Speirs & Company building that was never actually used and was only in existence between 1905 and about 1919.
As the Leslies’ book was published five years ago there have been some further developments in the lives of these buildings. I was sorry to see that plans were passed last year by the Highland County Council to demolish the old poorhouse – built in 1859 and designed by William Joass, an architect about whom I should like to learn more. The poorhouse had never been heavily used, and was turned into a hostel for school children in the 1930s (the Margaret Carnegie Hostel).
The Combination Poorhouse, Portree. Extract from the 1st-edition OS map, surveyed in 1875. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The John Martin Hospital at Uig was a youth hostel in 2011, but was closed and sold off around 2013, while the Ross Memorial Hospital, which had been turned into an arts centre in the 1980s and had closed in 2007, has since been remodelled and extended to become the new West Highland College, opened in 2013 as part of the University of the Highlands and Islands.
There are currently two community hospitals on Skye, at Portree and Broadford (the Mackinnon Memorial). A new health centre was built next to the Mackinnon Memorial Hospital in 2012 by the NHS Highlands Estates Department. I rather like the health centre. It reminds me of a boat-house or perhaps even a smoke-house, though that might not have been what the architects were aiming for. In 2014 plans were announced to build a new community hospital on the island at Broadford with a reduction in services at Portree, sparking a ‘Save Portree Hospital’ campaign (there is to be a protest march on 20 June, if you feel like joining in). It seems likely that the Portree hospital building will be replaced. I hope that it will not share the same fate as the former poorhouse.
J. C. Leslie and S. J. Leslie, History of Highland HospitalsThe Hospitals of Skye, 2011, Old Manse Books, Avoch, Scotland ISBN 978-0-9569002-0-3 £5
Back in February this year, the local press relayed proposals to transform Woolmanhill Hospital, Aberdeen, into a hotel and homes. The scheme, submitted by the developer Charlie Ferrari, is for a 52-bed boutique hotel, 27 serviced apartments, 32 residential apartments and just 10 affordable flats. Ferrari has set up a company CAF Properties (Woolmanhill) Ltd to put in a joint application with NHS Grampian to Aberdeen City Council. The hotel and serviced apartments would be sold to the G1 Group, owners of the Palm Court Hotel in Aberdeen. Ferrari was quoted in the Aberdeen Evening Express saying that he hoped to bring the site back to life and make it a ‘vibrant addition to the cityscape’, recognising that it was valued for its heritage. The proposal is to renovate four buildings on the site, and incorporates a lighting display in the central courtyard. The original hospital building would become the hotel, the Stephen Building, would be converted into the serviced apartments while the Victoria building would be turned into flats. The affordable housing element is destined for the former archive building to the north of the site.
The medical block, fronting Woolmanhill, photographed in 1964
All four main buildings are listed at grade A. The oldest of the four was designed by Archibald Simpson and is an elegant neo-Classical granite building of 1840, near the centre of Aberdeen. Comparable to the earlier Gray’s Hospital at Elgin, it was designed as an impressive public building as much as a functional hospital. To the rear of Simpson’s block are two ranges, largely dating from 1887, which create a roughly triangular court. Just as the Infirmary at Woolmanhill was replaced nearly a century later by the Foresterhill complex, the Woolmanhill building replaced an earlier infirmary built a century before.
Façade of the Royal Infirmary, Aberdeen. Engraving by W. Banks & son. Wellcome Library, London. Reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0
The Aberdeen Infirmary was founded in 1739 and the foundation stone of the first building on the Woolmanhill site was laid in January 1740. It was of simple construction, built to the designs of William Christall who had visited Edinburgh and Glasgow to view William Adam’s Edinburgh Infirmary and Glasgow’s Town’s Hospital, before completing his own plans. It opened in 1742, providing twenty beds, including accommodation for lunatics, and had cost £484. No illustration of this building appears to have survived. On the completion of Simpson’s new Infirmary the old building was demolished.
Extract from the 1st edition OS map. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
In 1887 a major extension and reconstruction scheme was begun. The site formed an awkward wedge and added to this difficulty the managers wished to avoid interfering with the existing buildings. H. Saxon Snell, the well-known hospital architect in London, was consulted and at his suggestion Simpson’s building was converted into an administrative and clinical area, with new ward pavilions built to the rear. He also recommended retaining the separate fever block at the rear as part of the new surgical block. Known as the Jubilee Extension Scheme, the new blocks opened in 1897 and provided a new surgical block, medical block, pathology and laundry blocks. W. & J. Smith & Kelly, the Aberdeen firm of architects, carried out the work.
View from the south-west, photographed in May 2015 by RCAHMS
The new administration department, formed out of the former hospital, was also to provide accommodation for nurses:
“The first thing in a good modern hospital was to have the best possible accommodation for nurses… In some of the larger hospitals such as that of Marylebone every nurse has a bedroom to herself. The committee do not propose to go to that extent but they propose that everyone of the higher nurses… shall have a room to herself, and that the others shall be accommodated two in one room.”
It is perhaps worth noting that the Marylebone hospital referred to in London was in fact a workhouse infirmary. It is a measure of the changing attitudes to hospital and nursing provision for paupers that their nurses were offered better accommodation than those in a Scottish Royal Infirmary.
Plans of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary published in H. C. Burdett’s Hospitals and Asylums of the World, 1893, portfolio of plans. Above: the northern half of the site, with the new block on the left. Below the original building showing its new room uses.
Ground plan of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, from H. C. Burdett, Hospitals and Asylums of the World, 1893
Ground plan of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, from H. C. Burdett, Hospitals and Asylums of the World, 1893.
Burdett classified the layout and plan of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary as ‘composite or heap of buildings’, which was his class 4, class 1 being pavilion plan hospitals, class 2 block plan and class 3 corridor plan. There is a suggestion that the ‘heap of buildings’ class was the worst type. The plans were published before works on the new buildings had been completed.
Operating Theatre, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, from the Handbook and Guide to Aberdeen of 1914
Amongst the later additions were new operating theatres (pictured above), and out-patients’ department (below)
The out-patients’ department, photographed in 1964
Out-Patient Department, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, from the Handbook and Guide to Aberdeen of 1914
The out-patients’ department (demolished) was opened in November 1912, situated to the east of the infirmary on the other side of Woolmanhill. A large top-lit waiting hall was centrally placed off which were situated admission rooms, dispensary, Ear and Throat, Dental and Skin clinics, bacteriological and sterilising rooms, operating rooms for minor surgery, dressing and recovery rooms etc. A basement housed stores and heating chamber, and on the upper floor were two 4-bed wards for the Ear & Throat department and some staff accommodation.
Extract from the 25-inch OS map revised in 1926. The out-patients’ block occupies the island site north of the Drill Hall, bounded by St Andrew Street, Woolmanhill, Andrew and John Streets. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Following the opening of the new Royal Infirmary on the Foresterhill site in the 1920s Woolmanhill was retained and there were still in-patient facilities here until relatively recently alongside a number of out-patient clinics. Since the closure of the hospital was agreed in 1999, health services have been winding down on the site and gradually relocating. The last remaining clinics are for ENT and audiology, which are due to move out this year.
[Sources: Evening Express, 4 Feb 2016, online, 27 March 2016, online: British Medical Association, Aberdeen 1914, A Handbook and Guide, Aberdeen, 1914]
For nearly twenty years now the faculty of Health and Applied Sciences of the University of the West of England has occupied the old Bristol Lunatic Asylum. The asylum, latterly Glenside Hospital, was wound down from 1993 when it merged with neighbouring Manor Park Hospital. New facilities for mental health patients were constructed on that side, and it was renamed Blackberry Hill Hospital. The University faculty was formed in 1996 when the existing faculty of Health and Community Studies merged with Avon and Gloucestershire College of Health and Swindon College of Health Studies.
The former hospital is one of the most attractive architecturally of the many county asylums built for paupers in the mid-nineteenth century. Its history has the added interest of its association with one of Britain’s greatest modern artists, Stanley Spencer, who worked as a medical orderly here during the First World War when the hospital was requisitioned by the War Office. During that time it was renamed Beaufort War Hospital. There is a museum on the site housed in the chapel.
Bristol Pauper Lunatic Asylum first opened in 1861. Patients had previously been sent to St Peter’s Hospital, the city workhouse that had been set up in a converted Jacobean house near St Peter’s church (see map below). By the 1850s this had become inadequate and there had been ‘certain distressing casualties’; one case at least had been the subject of an inconclusive investigation. There was much local hostility to the idea of building a county asylum, principally on the grounds of the increased burden on the rates. It was hoped that a swap might be organised with the workhouse at Stapleton, moving the pauper lunatics there and the ordinary paupers into St Peter’s, or of just converting some of the workhouse buildings into lunatic wards. But these plans were quashed by the Poor Law Commissioners who flatly refused to sanction the conversion of any part of the workhouse.
Extract from Millerd’s Map of Bristol, 1671 (public domain image via commons.wikimedia)
In the interim, legislation governing the provisions for pauper lunatics was tightened up, with an amendment to the Lunacy Act making it harder for counties and boroughs to avoid providing suitable accommodation. With no option but to construct a new asylum, a competition was held for the design. There were 27 entries, judged by the building committee with advice from Anthony Salvin. In March 1857 the best three were awarded prizes, the first premium went to Thomas Royce Lysaght of Bristol (£100), second were Medland & Maberly of London and Gloucester (£50), and third J. H. Hirst of Bristol (£25). Lysaght’s plans were preferred as they seemed to meet the requirements while remaining within the restricted budget, and the architect had experience of asylum construction, having been responsible for that at Cork. Mr Herapath¹ congratulated the committee for having chosen well. They had ‘taken care not to adopt the most beautiful plan, but had chosen one which was neat but not gaudy’. It was ‘quite sufficiently ornamental’. [Bristol Mercury, 21 March 1857, p.6]
Ground-plan of the asylum as first built, published in the 16th Annual Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1862
Henry Crisp has sometimes been credited with the design of the original buildings (including by Historic England in the list description), but he only arrived on the scene later and it was Lysaght who got the job. Construction began in 1858 and after it was finished it was dubbed the Lunatic Pauper Palace on account of its architectural grandeur and the high cost of building (£27,500 for the building including lodge, stables, roads, planting, draining, boundary walls, supply of gas ‘etc’). The clerk of works was Mr Long, and the building contractors were J. & J. Foster, with Mr Yalland, mason; Mr Melsom, St James’s Barton, plasterer and painter; Mr Abbot, plumber; Mr Williams, glazier and Mr Harris, gas-fitter. [Bristol Mercury and Western Counties Advertiser, 20 Oct 1860,p.2]
Extract from the 6-inch OS map surveyed in 1880-1. By this date additional wings had been built to the west and east. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The cost was not far removed from the half-a-dozen or so other asylums that were built around the same time; those in Cumberland and Northumberland, for the same number of patients, were estimated to cost £20,00 and £42,427 respectively. It was also considerably less than the figure being bandied about in the press some years earlier when it was reported that Lord Palmerston had ordered the authorities of Bristol to build a new lunatic asylum at an estimated cost of £45,000 (although the following year the figure reported was a more reasonable £20,000). [The Western Times, 11 Feb 1854]
It was designed in the fashionable Italianate style, the front ‘well broken up’ and forming ‘without superfluous ornament’ … ‘an exceedingly picturesque structure’, and built from Pennant stone that was mostly quarried on site, the quarries were then used for water storage beneath the kitchens. The asylum could accommodate 200 patients, with one-third in single rooms (a few of which were padded cells), the remainder in associated dormitories containing between six and eleven beds. In addition there were infirmary wards, providing a total of 22 beds. A measure of fire-proof construction was achieved through rolled iron floor joists filled in between with concrete, apart from in the offices and stores. Fire plugs for attaching hose pipes were provided at four points and the towers contained large reservoirs of water.
The Commissioners in Lunacy published a report on the asylum in 1861 following an inspection of the buildings in October the previous year by two of the Commissioners, Robert Lutwidge (Lewis Carroll’s uncle) and Dr James Wilkes. The main building was located on the northern boundary of the site, the principal elevation facing south-east. It was approached from the lodge at Fishponds along an ornamentally planted avenue. All the ground to the south of the building, amounting to around 17 acres, was used as a vegetable garden. Patients largely occupied the apartments on the south side of the building, staff and services the north side. The latter included the porter’s room, reception room, visiting room, committee room, apartments and office for the clerk or steward, rooms for the engineer and stores. In the central block, which acted as a buffer between the male and female sides of the building, were staff apartments: on the ground floor those of the Assitant Medical Officer and the Matron, the Medical Superintendent’s residence occupied the first and second floors, and servants had bedrooms on the third floor.
The dining-hall, which continues to serve its original function at the Glenside Campus UWE, photographed in December 2013 by Nick , licensed under creative commons CC BY 2.0
The kitchens were on the ground floor and the dining-hall above – a lift being installed to take food from one to the other. There was a chapel within the main complex, capable of holding 150 patients, located adjacent to the dining hall which could seat the same number. The galleries for the patients were 12 feet wide, were heated by open fire-places, and were positioned to take advantage of the views over the surrounding landscape (‘commanding good views of the picturesque country round’). Window seats encouraged patients to sit and contemplate the scenery. There were also day rooms, larger rooms with two fire-places. Every ward had direct access to the airing grounds, which were ornamentally laid out, with walls low enough to allow patients to see over them.
The laundry photographed during the First World war, posted on flickr by Nick , licensed under creative commons CC BY 2.0
Heating and ventilating for the ‘asylum portion’ was by Haden & Son of Trowbridge. The towers at the extreme ends of the building extracted foul air from the wards, which was then conveyed through the roofs in a pupose-built channel. The same firm supplied the kitchen equipment. On the female side was a ‘laundry ward and establishment’ consisting of a 10-bed ward for the more convalescent patients, a receiving-room for soiled linen, a wash-house, laundry, room for sorting clean linen, and nearby were drying machines and boilers. Corresponding with this on the male side were workshops, with a ‘workshop ward’, carpenter’s, shoemaker’s and tailor’s shops. The dead-house and postmortem room were also at this end, ‘being nearer the road for funerals’.
There were various phases of extensions to the asylum. It was first enlarged in 1875-7 when the wings to the west and east were added, then in 1882 a detached chapel was built, the original one being absorbed into the hall. The chapel was designed by a local architect, E. Henry Edwards in a ‘Norman Gothic’ style to seat 350 souls. The foundation stone was laid in September 1880, the building contractors were Forse and Ashley of Bristol. [Bristol Mercury & Daily Post, 25 Sept 1880, p.8]
Extract from the second edition OS map revised in 1912 showing the asylum and neighbouring workhouse. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Henry Crips and Oatley were the architects for the additions carried out in two phases between 1887-91. The first phase comprised four new wings, mortuary and workshops, for which the building contractor was A. Krauss of Russell Town, Bristol. The second phase comprised an ‘entirely new’ administration and residential block providing for the greatly enlarged asylum – it had expanded to from its original accommodation for 250 patients to an anticipated 1,000 patients. For this phase the general building contractor was A. J. Beaver of Bedminster, and R. Withycombe of Bristol was the clerk of works. Fire-proof floors were carried out by Dennett & Ingle of Whitehall.
It was at this period that the impressive clock tower was built, rising to 120 ft with clock faces on each side. These were supplied by Potts & Sons of Leeds, and were 8 ft in diameter with illuminated dials. Bells truck the quarters and the hours. A strictly time-tabled routine had obviously become a key feature of the running of the asylum. [Building News, 10 April 1891, p.500]
This detail from the perspective view of the asylum published in Building News shows the additions at the south end of the original wings
Further additions were carried out in 1888-90, and then again in 1897-1902. This time the Visiting Committee dispensed with the services of an architect and appointed H. R. Withycombe, the clerk of works who had served under Crisp and Oatley, to supply plans and supervise construction. (There seems to be some doubt as to whether Withycombe actually designed the buildings or if another architect was involved.)[Western Daily Press, 16 April 1902, p.7]
During the First World War the asylum was requisitioned as a military hospital for the war wounded and renamed Beaufort War Hospital; the existing patients were relocated to other asylums, but some returned in 1919 when the military handed the hospital back to the City. Cary Grant’s mother, Elsie Leach, is said to have been one of those readmitted after the war. Although officially now called Bristol Mental Hospital, it continued to be known as Bristol Asylum locally, well into the 1920s. In 1959 it changed its name again to Glenside Hospital. The conversion to the Glenside campus of the University of the West of England seems to have been a particularly happy one, preserving the old buildings and their setting.
¹ Mr Herapath, probably William Herapath, Professor of Chemistry (1796-1868), a magistrate and prominent Town Councillor.
