BRECON

Brecon Infirmary, The Watton (demolished) SO 048 283

This was a small purpose-built voluntary hospital, the forerunner of the War Memorial Hospital (see below). The foundation stone was laid in August 1832 by George Price Watkins Esq. who had subscribed £1,000 to the building fund. (I have not been able to identify the builder and/or architect.) Watkins gave a speech in which he hoped that the building would be an ornament to the town and a credit to the liberality of the county. The local medical practitioners and physicians had promised to give their attention to the patients free of charge. The infirmary was to accommodate 40 patients. It opened in March 1834. The building was extant in the 1960s-80s when it was in use as council offices, but was demolished to make way for the B4601 that by-passes The Watton. [Sources: Welshman, 17 Aug. 1832, p.3.]

Breconshire War Memorial Hospital, Cerrigcochion Road SO 049 287

Built as a memorial to those who lost their lives in the First World War and to replace Brecon Infirmary, the new hospital was designed by Martin & Martin and W. H. Ward of Birmingham. The general contractors were Watkins Williams & Sons of Cardiff. .Work was underway on the site in 1926, the land was gifted by Lord Glanusk, Joseph Henry Russell Bailey, the Lord Lieutenant of Breconshire who played a major role in establishing the hospital. He arrived to perform the official opening ceremony in January 1928, but collapsed after beginning his address to the crowd and passed away shortly afterwards. His son, Major the Hon. W. R. Bailey, stepped up and took over to the extent of handing over the deeds of the site. The Bishop of Swansea and Brecon then offered the dedication prayer but in view of the tragic death of Lord Glanusk the ceremony was then cut short.

Built on a gently sloping site, the central section is of two storeys, from which the ward wings splay southwards, that to the east single storeyed that to the west on a raised basement accommodating the fall in the ground. (The plan is similar to the Memorial Hospital at Shooters Hill in London built 1922-7, W. A. Pite, Son & Fairbrother architects.) The ward wings are flat roofed, while the central section has a pitched roof. It was brick built with stucco finish and slate roofs. The main entrance led into the Memorial Hall which contained bronze tablets inscribed with the names of those from Brecon County who lost their lives in First World War.

The hospital originally had 36 beds, half each for men and women, plus a ward with four cots for children. The adult wards were divided into a 12-bed ward and single private wards. At the southern end of each large ward was a sun room or solaria on to which beds could be wheeled, but which could be closed by bi-fold windows in inclement weather. This type of ‘veranda ward’ as it was sometimes known, was a recent innovation in the 1920s. Another innovation was the provision of head-phones for every bed for listening to the radio. There were also loud speaker connections in the solaria, matron’s sitting room and sisters, nurses’ and maids; recreation rooms. Matron controlled the riadion with a remote control switch from her sitting room.

Behind the central administration block were the kitchens, operating theatre unit and X-ray departments. The operating theatre suite comprised the theatre with scrub-up room attached, waiting lobby, anaesthetic room, and sterilising room. A separate rear access road led to the kitchen block, and also to the garage, mortuary and domestic offices. Heating was by hot water radiators. The hospital still had 40 beds in the mid-1960s, but an extension had by then been added to the north-east of the main building. A large extension has been built to the south (post 1990s?), respectful in style, materials and height. [Sources: Western Mail, 6 Jan 1928, p.7: Western Morning News, 12 Jan. 1928, p.7: Brecon County Times, 12 Jan 1928, p.6.]

St David’s Holspital (Brecon Union Workhouse), Bailihelig Road SO 037 281

Brecknock Poor Law Union agreed to construct a workhouse for 100 inmates in 1838. Sir Charles Morgan, MP for Brecon and the county of Monmouth, provided the land. The building was completed the following year, following a roughly cruciform plan. It became a Public Assistance Institution after the poor law and local government reforms introduced in 1930 and passed to the NHS in 1948 when it became a geriatric unit. In the mid-1960s the hospital had 46 beds for chronic cases. It closed in 1990 and became a hall of residence for Christ College. It seems to have continued in this use until at least 2021 but in August 2024 the premises were empty. [Sources: RCAHMW report on Coflein: Google StreetView: see also workhouses.org.]

BRONLLYS

Bronllys Hospital (South Wales Sanatorium), Bronllys SO 136 351

Originally planned as the King Edward VII Welsh National Memorial Sanatorium, but later known as the South Wales Sanatorium. The site chosen was the house and grounds of Pont-y-Wal, a late nineteenth-century house with landscaped grounds giving fine views of the Brecon Beacons. It was purchased by the Crown Estate in about 1913, but the outbreak of the First World War delayed progress in building the sanatorium.

This large sanatorium with its own chapel was designed to accommodate 256 adults and 48 boys. It was officially opened in July 1920 by King George V and Queen Mary. The buildings were designed by the hospital specialist architects Edwin T. and Stanley Hall of London. The chapel was funded by a gift of £5,000 from Sir David R. Llewellyn and H. Seymour Berry (later Lord Buckland of Bwlch) and is separately listed at Grade II.

The park and grounds are registered at grade II. There was also a recreation hall for the patients, the Basil Webb Hall, named in memory of Tom Henry Basil Webb and built with a bequest from Colonel Sir Henry Webb of £5,000. In the mid-1960s the hospital still had 233 beds for tuberculosis and chest patients. [Sources: listed building description: parks and gardens register: RCAHMW Coflein.]

BUILTH WELLS

Builth Union Workhouse, Brecon Road SO 042 507 (demolished)

Built in the 1870s and opened in 1875 to house 60 paupers. The building proved defective, cheaply built on inadequate foundations. During the First World War part of the workhouse was taken over as a Red Cross hospital. At the start of the war there were only 23 paupers in the workhouse. It closed in 1930 and was demolished during the Second World War. [Sources: workhouses.org.]

Builth Wells Cottage Hospital, Hospital Road SO 036 509 (demolished)

Builth cottage hospital opened in 1897 and was built to designs by Telfer Smith. The hospital had 25 beds in the mid-1960s, reduced to 17 by 2012. Services were transferred to the new Glan-Irfon Health and Social Care Centre in 2013, including in-patient beds. Despite pleas to save the building after it closed, the site was acquired for a housing development and subsequently demolished. The campaign against closure included protest graffiti cut in bracken on the hillside overlooking Builth Wells created in 2007. A small housing development has been built on the site on a cul-de-sac named, ironically, Hospital View. [Sources: BBC news website 4 November 2012: RCAHMW Coflein.]

GLENTAWE

Adelina Patti Hospital, Craig-y-Nos Castle

Craig-y-nos Castle is a country house in the upper Swansea Valley. I twas built in 1841-3 by Captain Rhys Davies Powell to designs by T. H. Wyatt. The castle and park were purchased in 1878 by the opera singer Adelina Patti. After her death in 1919 the castle and grounds were sold to the Welsh National Memorial Trust and converted into a sanatorium for patients with tuberculosis. In the late 1950s it became a geriatric hospital, but closed in 1986 when services were transferred to the new Ystradgynlais Community Hospital (see below). The castle is presently a hotel. [See: Children of Craig-y-nos’: a tuberculosis history UCL website.]

KNIGHTON

Knighton Hospital (Knighton Union Workhouse), Ffrydd Road SO 285 720

The original Knighton Union Workhouse was built in 1837 to accommodate 120 paupers, but it was rebuilt in 1886 to designs by Edward Jones of Newton. The striking buildings were constructed of local rubble stone, its greyish brown tones contrasting with red brick dressings. In the mid-1960s it had 32 beds for chronic patients.

Much of the 1880s workhouse complex was demolished in the 1970s-80s, only the north-west block and part of the block to the south survive. The photograph above is viewed from the north – the range on the right in the foreground is the surviving north-west block.[Sources: workhouses.org: OS maps.]

LLANIDLOES

Llanidloes and District War Memorial Hospital, Eastgate St SN 955 849

The foundation stone for the hospital was laid in December 1929 by Mrs Edward Davies and Mr Edward Hamer, chairman of the Hospital Committee. It was built to replace the original hospital which had opened in 1930, presumably in converted premises. In the mid-1960s the hospital had 56 beds and was mostly for long-stay patients (36 of those beds were for the chronic sick).[Sources: Western Mail, 10 Dec. 1929, p.3.]

Llanidloes Isolation Hospital

The Radnorshire Standard reported that an isolation hospital for Llanidloes district was under construction in February 1903. [Source: Radnorshire Standard, 4 Feb. 1903, p.2.]

LLANDRINDOD WELLS

Llandrindod Wells Hospital, Temple St SO 061 614

Llandrindod Wells was a spa town that boasted sulphur mineral waters which, it was claimed, had ‘therapeutical uses’. Several hydropathic hotels and spa hotels and wells were established in the small town. The present hospital began as a cottage hospital and convalescent home established in 1880. It was extended in 1883 when tenders were submitted for additions (S. W. Williams, architect).[Sources: Building News, 15 June 1883, supplement p.xx: Llandrindod Wells Hospital and County War Memorial, Annual Report 1926, internet archive.]

Highland Moors Military Hospital (Highland Moors Hotel) SO 054 597

Established during the First World War in a former hotel to treat soldiers suffering from trench fever through a combination of physiotherapy and water treatments. It returned to being a hydropathic hotel at some time in the early 1920s, when it was run by the Llandrindod Wells Springs (limited) company.

The hotel was offered for sale in August 1929 but then withdrawn from the sale. It seems to have become a boarding school for boys by 1932, run by the Welsh National Memorial Association. It then appears to have been acquired by the King Edward VII Welsh National Memorial Association as a convalescent home for children (an advertisement for an assistant nurse there appears in the Nursing Times in March 1940).

The OS map revised in 1948-9 has it marked as a hospital and convalescent home. It is now a hotel again, outwardly little altered barring replacement windows, and advertises itself as ‘the last Victorian Hydro Spa Hotel in Wales’. [Source: Peoples Collection Wales: Western Mail, 19 April 1924, p.14; 28 Aug. 1929, p.1.]

Llandrindod Isolation Hospital SO 0559 6209

MACHYNLLETH

Bro Ddyfi Community Hospital (Machynlleth Chest Hospital; Machynlleth Union Workhouse), Heol Maengwyn SH 750 008

Machynlleth Union Workhouse was built in 1860. During the First World War it became a Red Cross Hospital – though not until towards the end of the war in 1917. In 1920 it was taken over by the Edward VII Welsh Memorial Association as a sanatorium for tuberculosis. It was known as the King Edward VII Hospital for a time, and then simply Machynlleth Chest Hospital. In the mid-1960s it had 35 beds for tuberculosis and chest cases. More recently it has become the Bro Dyfil Community Hospital, the buildings having undergone redevelopment in 2023. [Sources: Powys County Times, 26 May 2023 online: workhouses.org.]

Machynlleth District Hospital (Londonderry Cottage Hospital; Machynlleth Health Centre) SH 751 008

Machynlleth cottage hospital was founded in the 1890s by the Dowager Marchioness of Londonderry (whose family residence was Plas Machylleth). After her death in September 1906 her son, Lord Herbert Vane-Tempest continued to maintain the hospital. It originally occupied the former school building near the church.

In the early 1930s the decision was taken to re-establish the hospital in a new, purpose-built premises. The new building was officially opened in April 1935 as the Machynlleth, Corris and District Hospital. [Sources: South Wales Daily news, 16 Oct. 1906, p.5: Dyfi Heritage Group, Peoples Collection Wales.]

In the mid-1960s this hospital had 16 acute beds. The building remains repurposed as a health centre, with the development of the former workhouse into the present community hospital (see above).

NEWTOWN

Montgomeryshire County Infirmary (Ysbyty Sir Drefaldwyn), Llanfair Rd SO 109 922

Founded in 1868, on the north side of Severn Place near Long Bridge. It was demolished in the 1960s-70s when Severn Place was widened and altered to form a continuation of Back Lane.

A new purpose-built hospital was erected in 1911, in an attractive Neo-Georgian style, with central two-storey administration building flanked by single-storey ward wings. The hospital had 30 beds in the mid-1960s. The hospital was extended to the south in the 1970s-80s, with two single-storey ranges – that to the east now a rehabilitation unit that to the west an out-patients department. The most recent addition to the site is the Fan Gorau unit, at the south-east corner of the site, a community mental health facility.

TALGARTH

Mid-Wales Hospital (Brecon and Radnor Asylum) SO 162 331 (buildings empty and in ruinous condition 2024)

Officially opened on 18 March 1903 by Lord Glanusk, who was Chairman of the Joint Counties Committee. It was designed by A. E. Gough, of Giles, Gough & Trollope, specialist hospital architects of London, and the main building contractor was Watkin Williams of Pontypridd. The first Medical Superintendent was Dr W. E. Jones. Mental Hospital.

The Counties of Brecon, Radnor, Monmouth and Hereford, with the City of Hereford, had originally built a joint asylum at Abergavenny (see page on Glamorgan). Hereford City and County built their own separate asylum in the 1870s, but this did little to relieve pressure on the Abergavenny hospital. In 1890 Monmouthshire decided to dissolve the partnership with Brecon and Radnor, effectively forcing those two counties to build their own asylum. It took some time to settle on a site, but eventually a farm at Chancefield near Talgarth was purchased. The adjoining farm of Wernfawr was also acquired. The water supply was good, and the ground yielded clay for brick making and a quarry for stone.

The new asylum was designed to accommodate 350 patients, with an administrative block large enough to cope with an extension of up to around 500 patients. The plan was on the standard échelon layout, in which the patients’ accommodation blocks were arranged in an arrow or échelon formation, linked by a single-storey corridor to their rear to each other and the central service section, and each block with an unimpeded outlook over surrounding grounds. The administration block was on the north side, with a detached chapel a little further to the north. The brochure produced for the opening ceremony described the building as ‘entirely utilitarian in character’. It was built of local stone with Grinshill stone dressings, the interior lined with bricks made on site. Fireproof construction for the ceilings comprised concrete supported by iron joists, and the main corridors were constructed with fireproof floors. Stairways were of granolithic stone.

The patients’ blocks allowed for the classification of patients by gender (males on one side, females on the other) and by type of illness. Two were for patients with epilepsy, two for recent acute cases, and two infirmary blocks. The blocks contained day rooms and dormitories on each of their two floors, with a sanitary annexe to the rear. Photographs of the dormitories in the block for male epileptic patients show that the beds were tightly packed, with rows on each long side of the dormitory and further beds in the middle. This was not uncommon at the time in pauper asylums and some workhouse dormitories.

A large central dining hall doubled as an entertainment hall, with a stage and dressing rooms. There was also staff accommodation on site, offices, committee rooms, visitors rooms, workshops, kitchens, laundry, stores etc. There was a separate isolation hospital to the east of the main complex.

An admissions hospital was added between the main complex and the isolation hospital, probably in the 1930s (it appears in outline on the OS map revised in 1948). About that time the asylum changed its name to the Mid Wales Mental Hospital. Its administration and management passed to Breconshire County Council in 1930, and then to the NHS in 1948. In the mid-1960s the hospital had 528 psychiatric beds. It closed in 1999. Part of the site became the Black Mountains Business Park, but that did not prove a success and few businesses remain on site. In the mean time the buildings have become increasingly ruinous, not helped by the theft of roof slates. [Source: opening brochure on Highroyds Hospital website: Google Street View: OS maps: and see also The Derelict Miscellany website for photographs of the site.]

WESHPOOL

Brynhyfryd Hospital (Forden Union Workhouse), Forden SJ 216 000

Brick built, largely three storey former workhouse, of particularly severe appearance. It was built in 1795 to designs by Joseph Bromfield for 500 inmates. In the mid-1960s this was a hospital for the chronic sick and ‘mentally subnormal’ with 195 beds. In 2001 it was renamed Camlad House. [See: workhouses.org.]

Victoria Memorial Hospital, Salop Road SJ 227 078

The hospital built in November 1902, as a memorial to the late Queen Victoria. The Victoria Nursing Institute were behind establishing the hospital and raising public subscriptions. The site was gifted by the Misses Howell of Rhiewport. It was designed by Frank Shayler, with Evan Davies as building contractor. The foundation stone was laid in November 1902 by the former lady mayoress, Mrs Shuker. The hospital had 23 beds in the mid-1960s, but was substantially rebuilt in 2004 with a new renal unit added in 2013.

YSTRADGYNLAIS

Ystradgynlais Community Hospital, Glanrhyd Road SN 783 091

Built in the 1980s to replace Craig-y-Nos Hospital. Designed by Anthony Williams & Partners, as a low-rise complex with radial plan. The Welsh Common Services Authority wer awarded a Gold Medal for Architecture for the building at the 1988 National Eisteddfod of Wales.