Ten years ago, this was my very first post. I have revised it and added some photographs that I took in 2018 when I was staying on the University of Sterling Campus.

The hospital was opened at the beginning of the Second World War, occupying the mansion house designed by Robert Adam in his castle style. The estates of Airthrey Castle were built on to form Stirling University. Adam drew up designs for Airthrey Castle in 1791, but was not involved with its construction. Building work was supervised by Thomas Russell of Seton.

The entrance front was rebuilt in 1891 to designs by David Thomson for Donald Graham, the chief partner in the firm of William Graham & Company, East India Merchants, of Glasgow, who had purchased the estate in 1889. Graham died in January 1901 of erysipelas, the house remaining in possession of his wife. In 1924 the shipowner Charles Donaldson leases the estate. He died at the castle in December 1938.

At the outbreak of the Second World War the Estate was acquired by the Ministry of Health as an Emergency Maternity Hospital administered by Stirling County Council, taking patients evacuated from Stirling, Glasgow and Clydebank. In mid-September 1939 the Stirling Observer reported that the castle was being fitted out with 25 to 30 beds (in the 1950s and ’60s it had 30 beds). By the beginning of November 1939 there had already been 40 patients at Airthrey Castle. The Allan Water Hotel in Bridge of Allan had also been taken over as a hospital for expectant mothers at the start of the war, but this also took patients from Dumbartonshire. The evacuation scheme had been carried out in just two days following the outbreak of the war. By January 1940 the Allan Water Hotel had been returned to its owners, its use as a hospital having been discontinued. The hotel had initially been kept in reserve. The need for large numbers of beds for the evacuation of Glasgow hospitals that had been anticipated at the start of the war had not materialised. Airthrey Castle was proving sufficient.

The castle remained in the ownership of the Graham family until after the war, having been put up for sale in November 1944. The advertisements for the sale noted that the Castle and ‘certain outbuildings’ with garden were temporarily occupied by the Local Authority as a War Emergency Maternity Hospital’.[Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 4 Nov . 1944, p.2.] The castle and estate were still being advertised fro sale in January 1945, when a large advertisement was place in Country Life. [Country Life, 12 Jan. 1945, p.8.] After the war, in November 1945, it was reported that there had been 2,050 births at Airthrey Castle since it opened. Sadly three mothers died during that time.[Falkirk Herald, 24 Nov. 1945, p.5.]

In March 1946 Stirling County Council decided to purchase Airthrey Castle and and part of the estate in order that the much-needed maternity hospital should remain open.[Falkirk Herald, 30 March 1946, p.5.] The purchase had been completed by the end of October that year. With the foundation of the National Health Service in 1948, the hospital passed to the Western Regional Health Board. A nurses’ home was built in 1953 to the south-east of the house. This L-shaped, two-storey, flat-roofed building appears has survived and was in use as a surgery/health centre for the University in the 1980s. 

In 1965 arrangements were made for the transfer to the new University of Stirling of the Airthrey Castle Estate, although it remained in use as a maternity hospital until 1968-9. The hospital was replaced by new maternity units in Paisley and Stirling. The castle was listed in 1973 category B.

Sources unless otherwise given in the text above: Edinburgh Evening News, 23 Jan 1901: Dundee Courier, 1 Jan 1924: Western Daily Press, 8 Dec 1938: Stirling Observer, 14 Sept. 1939 p.3: The Scotsman, 3 Nov 1939, p.5: Dundee Courier, 15 Jan 1940: Dundee Evening Telegraph, 21 Feb 1944: PP ‘Report of the Department of Health for Scotland…’ 1953 c.9107: PP ‘Scottish Home and Health Department Review of the Hospital Plan for Scotland’ 1966 c.2877: OS maps.

Further Reading: N. Reid,  ‘Airthrey Castle Maternity Hospital 1939-1948’, and E. Rose ‘Airthrey Castle Maternity Hospital 1948-1969’ in Report of Proceedings of the Society of the Scottish History of Medicine, 1988-9, pp.14-17