Although I write a new post infrequently, most weeks I revise one or other of the pages on the historic-hospitals site. I thought perhaps it would be useful to share what I have been doing, and draw attention to new information.

Strathmore Hospital, Blairgowrie

At the beginning of this month I was delighted to receive this aerial photograph of Strathmore Hospital, Blairgowrie, Perthshire. It was taken from a light aircraft by the husband of one of the members of staff. Parts of the hospital are still standing – the larger square building at the centre of the photograph and the small, single-storey building to the top left. They have been converted into private houses, and other houses have been built on the site in place of the two large ward wings in the foreground of the picture. The hospital first opened in June 1904. It was for infectious diseases and built to serve the burghs in Eastern Perthshire of Couper Angus, Alyth, Blairgowrie and Rattray. The architect was Lake Falconer, who had earlier designed the cottage hospital in Blairgowrie, still functioning as an NHS community hospital. Strathmore Hospital was latterly a geriatric unit before it closed in 1987.

Northern Ireland

Over the last couple of months I have been reading about the hospitals in Northern Ireland in preparation for a short talk for Belfast Health and Social and Care Trust. I have started to revise and update the Northern Ireland page, but there is still a long way to go. As might be expected, there are some significant differences between the way in which hospital provision developed in Ireland from the rest of Britain, though fewer differences in architectural design. Uniquely in Ireland an Act of Parliament of 1765 aimed to encourage the establishment of hospitals for the ‘sick and diseased poor’ in the more remote rural areas. There was no comparable legislation in England, Scotland or Wales. By 1771, 26 county infirmaries had been built. The County Infirmary at Armagh is a surviving example. It closed in the 1990s but was adapted to new uses including the Armagh Irish and Local Studies Library.

Staffordshire

Recently I have been revising the Staffordshire page. Of the 42 hospitals listed there, the majority were still standing in the early 1990s. Six were either in the course of construction or have been built since then. There is still a lot to be added to the Staffordshire page, but at least it is a bit more up to date on the current status of the county’s historic hospitals.

The uncertain future of historic hospitals was one of the main reasons for the survey of pre-1948 hospitals undertaken by the Royal Commission on the Historic Monuments of England in the early 1990s. When the NHS was founded in 1948 one of its main aims was to replace pre-war buildings with a network of district general hospitals that would centralise and rationalise services. The huge cost of that undertaking has meant that this has been a much slower process than had been anticipated and it was only by the 1980s that large numbers of old hospitals were becoming surplus to requirements. At the same time the ‘care in the community’ policy in the mental health sector meant that the majority of large mental hospitals were closing and up for disposal.

The rebuilding policy of the NHS has had a major impact on our hospital heritage, with a high percentage of demolition despite the historic significance of these sites. In Staffordshire alone, thirty hospitals have been demolished, either completely or partly, ranging in size from cottage hospitals to large general hospitals. These include Hartshill Orthopaedic Hospital, Rugely Cottage Hospital, and large sections of St Edwards and St Matthew’s Hospitals, as well as most of the North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary.

The North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary in Stoke on Trent was an early example of a pavilion-plan hospital, built in 1866-9. The only part of the original hospital to have been retained is the western entrance block, the ward pavilions and all the rest of the complex that appear on the architectural perspective above have gone.

The Royal Infirmary grew considerably, particularly in the early twentieth century. As its services and the number of beds increased, the need to accommodate more nursing staff grew. The original nurses’ home to the west of the main complex was supplemented by a new home on the east side built in 1902 to commemorate the coronation of King Edward VII. This second home was extended in 1913 and again in 1925-7. A final extension was built during the Second World War, in 1940-2, to cope with the continuing expansion of the hospital. The 1940s wing was designed by Wood, Goldstraw and Yorath, and provided single bedrooms for 16 sisters and 83 nurses. Its most distinctive feature was a two-storey, flat-roofed projecting wing ending in semi-circular balconies that housed recreation rooms.

To the south of the old Royal Infirmary, was Stoke’s workhouse which developed into the City General Hospital. More recently the site has seen the development of the Royal Stoke University Hospital. The original workhouse was constructed in 1832 with accommodation for 270 inmates. A hospital was added in 1842, and a school and chapel in 1866. These ranges survive more-or-less intact (there has been some demolition to the rear of the original workhouse and the school).

Further hospital blocks were built in the 1870s, ’80s and ’90s in the south-west quadrant of the site. The 1870s hospital wing has gone, but part of the hospital range to its west is still extant. The twentieth-century additions to the site seem to have entirely gone, including the nurses’ home, a moderne-style hospital wing to the north of the original workhouse, and a sanatorium just east of the school all dating to the 1920s and ’30s. (The sanatorium had already been demolished by the 1990s.) Gone too is the North Staffordshire Maternity Hospital built in the late 1960s to the east of the school and sanatorium.

Sadly the scope of the Royal Commission’s hospitals survey did not extend to post-war hospital blocks, so it can be hard to find any photographic record of buildings from the 1940s-80s that have already been demolished. The sheer number of hospitals made a more comprehensive survey too ambitious for the team. As it was, we could not visit every site in the country. I still have the notebook in which the London team jotted down our site visits, useful now to know when we took our quick snaps that helped us write up our reports. Sometimes the weather prevented us from doing much. We were rained off on our visit to St George’s in Stafford, and there’s a note by Staffordshire General that says ‘drove past in a thunderstorm’.