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Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary

December 13, 2025December 14, 2025 / Harriet Richardson / 2 Comments

On a recent trip to Dumfries & Galloway, staying in a beautiful house on the coast at Rockcliffe, I called in at two former hospitals in Dumfries – both former iterations of the Royal Infirmary. This is a hospital with a long history that has taken it to four separate sites.

*The former Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary, photographed November 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

The original Dumfries Infirmary was built to the west of Nith Bank, at High Dock, on land that bordered the river. The foundation stone was laid on 11 July 1777, and the infirmary received its first patients in 1778 – transferred from temporary premises. In 1807 the infirmary was granted a royal charter, and its benefactors incorporated as the Governors of the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary.

*Engraved view of the original Dumfries Infirmary, dated 1778, from John D. Comrie’s* History of Scottish Medicine to 1860, *London, 1927.* ref: M0009675: Wellcome Collection.

In the later 1860s the infirmary’s governors decided to relocate eastwards, to higher ground, and build a new hospital on a pavilion plan. This was the gold-standard in hospital design at the time, based on the principles of natural, cross-ventilation to minimise cross-infection. The governors held a competition for the design of the new hospital in 1868. A sum of £10,000 was proposed for the scheme, that was to include the architect’s fee and the salary of a clerk of works. The winning architect was John Starforth, whose practice was based in Edinburgh. Three years earlier Starforth had won the competition to design Greyfriars Church in Dumfries. He also went on to design the infirmary at Berwick-upon-Tweed, built in 1872-4, and Greenock’s poorhouse and parochial asylum (later Ravenscraig Hospital) built in 1876-9.

*Postcard of the former Royal Infirmary, probably* c.1900

The OS Town Plan of 1893 shows the basic layout of the new hospital. The western range comprised a central administration block flanked by ward wings. To the rear a central corridor led to two further ward pavilions. These two-storey pavilions contained wards on each floor on either side of the central spine corridor. At the farthest end of the wards, towers housed the lavatories.

*The Royal Infirmary on the OS Town Plan, surveyed in 1893 CC-BY (NLS)*

The foundation stone was laid on 16 September 1869. A report in The Builder in that year claimed that Starforth had amended the design to reduce the cost, but he refuted the accusation, stating that the lowest tender had been £8,650 9s 8d. (The highest was £10,875.) An architectural drawing of the infirmary was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1870. The Builder jibbed at the skyline, which it thought unsatisfactory and commented that the design had ‘some degree of architectural pretension’.

North range of the Royal Infirmary, showing the ward pavilion on the north side of the administration block. *(Photographed November 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*)

The building contractor for the infirmary was James Halliday, mason, and the contractor for the joiner work was John Mein. Mein also paid for the ‘cathedral glass’ in the central window above the main entrance. This was designed by James Ballantine of Edinburgh, in a geometric rather than figurative scheme. It featured pale shades of amber, green and blue in the upper section bordered by deeper shades of the same colours. The other main features of the entrance front were the statues of St Luke (the good physician) and Hygeia that flank the central window. These were executed by the local mason and sculptor, John Currie. Currie’s best-known works were ‘The Covenanter’ and ‘Old Mortality and his Pony’. He also carried out the figure of Dr Henry Duncan on the façade of the Dumfries Savings Bank.

*Central window above the entrance with figures of St Luke and Hygeia, November 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

Building work was largely completed towards the end of 1872, and an official opening of the infirmary took place in May 1873. Although the building was considerably larger than the old infirmary, it had the same number of beds (100). About a year after the new infirmary opened, an ice house was built on the site of the historic Christie’s Well, to the north of the infirmary. The door surround of the icehouse with two sculptured herms supporting a banner bearing the text ‘Christys Well’ was preserved and subsequently relocated to the new infirmary at Bankend Road. (There is a photograph of the door surround on the Art Uk website. The well is named Christie’s elsewhere, but was also known as St Queran’s Well.)

*The Jubilee Block and to the rear the King Edward VII block. Additions to the infirmary in the 1890s. Photograph ©️ H. Blakeman*

The icehouse was later replaced by the Jubilee Block, built in 1897 as a sanatorium for patients with tuberculosis. Another detached block was added in 1894 for infectious diseases. Both were built to designs by James Barbour. However, in 1910 the infirmary ceased to admit infectious diseases and subsequently both blocks were converted to staff quarters. The 1894 block was substantially rebuilt as a nurses’ hostel and became known as the King Edward VII Memorial block.

*Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary on the 25-inch OS map revised in 1899, showing later additions CC-BY (NLS)*

During the Second World War two additional ward huts were built to the south of the main building as part of the Emergency Medical Scheme increasing its bed complement to 170. The war-time survey of hospitals conducted for the Department of Health for Scotland criticised the design of the wards, condemning them as no longer satisfying modern requirements for medical care. The hutted annexes were cramped, nearly all the specialist units were too small, and the out-patient department particularly congested. Rebuilding on a new site was recommended, the old infirmary might then be adapted for the chronic sick and infirm.

*The Royal Infirmary on the large-scale OS map surveyed in 1962 CC-BY (NLS)*

In 1948 the infirmary transferred to the NHS, coming under the Western Regional Hospital Board based in Glasgow. With limited funds, no action was taken in the early years of the NHS to rebuild the infirmary on a new site. Instead, some modernisation was carried out in the 1960s, including the addition of a day room for patients. Nevertheless, rebuilding was the long-term goal, enshrined in the Hospital Plan for Scotland published by the Department of Health for Scotland in 1962.

*Former Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary, viewed from the north-west, photographed November 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

In the Hospital Plan, ten new district general hospitals were proposed at Inverness, Dumfries, Ayr, Kilmarnock, Coatbridge, Motherwell, Greenock, Paisley and Kirkcaldy, and in West Lothian. All but three of these were in the Western Region, and the new hospital for Dumfries was the first of those to be completed in 1974. In the late 1960s it was planned to adapt the former infirmary into a geriatric unit. The site for the new hospital was further out of Dumfries, fronting Bankend Road at the northern tip of the Crichton Royal Hospital site.

*The 1970s Dumfries District General, now Mountainhall Treatment Centre. Photographed in November 2025, ©️ H. Blakeman*

The foundation stone was laid on 16 September 1970 by the Chairman of the Board of Management for Dumfries and Galloway Hospitals, J. Wyllie Irving. The architects were the Glasgow-based Boswell, Mitchell and Johnson, and this was their first large-scale, health-care project. That said, it was the smallest of the new District Generals, with 424 in-patient beds. Frank Campbell, one of the partners in the firm, explained that the architects had aimed to design a building that was on a human scale, ‘integrated into the site and surroundings in a natural and unobtrusive manner’. They felt that a ‘massive multi-storey building’ would be oppressive. ‘It is an emotional experience going into a hospital. We attempted to create a less intimidating and more friendly atmosphere’. [quoted in Irving, Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary…, p.97.]

*Mountainhall Treatment Centre (formerly Dumfries District General) photographed November 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

The hospital was designed on a linear plan, as then advocated by the Scottish Home and Health Department, taking the form of a four-storey, offset cross-shaped block. At the lower ground level were service areas, including staff dining and changing rooms, kitchen, stores and plant rooms. On the ground floor were the outpatients unit and the main diagnostic departments and treatment areas along with administrative offices. On the upper three floors were the ward units, comprising single and four-bedded rooms with views over the landscaped grounds, those on the west looking towards the Galloway hills. The landscaping of the site with trees, shrubs and flowers aimed to increase the sense of peace and spaciousness. Now the mature trees set off the east side of the infirmary, though some of the planting must have been lost to later additions.

*Mountainhall Treatment Centre, photographed through the trees from the east, November 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

The building contractors for the new infirmary were Melville, Dundas and Whitson of Glasgow. As with many of the large-scale NHS building projects of this period works were impacted by the economic crisis and industrial action, but nevertheless were not seriously delayed. The contractors handed over the new hospital in 1974. A period of ‘commissioning’ ensued, during which time the hospital was equipped and made ready for opening, including recruiting additional staff. Additional staff accommodation was provided in the form of eleven terraced houses for married staff, one for the matron, and flats for 126 other nursing staff. These are located to the south west of the main building. The official opening by Queen Elizabeth took place in 1975.

*Dumfries Dental Centre, one of the more recent additions to the site. Photographed in November 2025 ©️ H. Blakeman*

Various additions were made to the site, including the Cresswell Maternity Unit, a PFI scheme, built around 2002; a cancer care centre added in 2003, and a dental centre in 2008 (Davis Duncan, architects – now NORR). With the opening of the new Royal Infirmary, the 1970s hospital was refurbished as a day treatment centre (Ryder Architecture for NHS Dumfries and Galloway, Balfour Beatty Construction). The transfer of patients to the new Royal Infirmary at Cargenbridge from Bankend Road began in December 2017. Since then NHS Dumfries & Galloway has moved its headquarters and main admin offices to Mountainhall, following the closure and sale of Crichton Hall.

Sources: The Builder, 10 Jan. 1865, p.416; 14 Nov. 1868, p.839; 3 July 1869, p.521; 5 March 1870: Gordon Irving, Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary – the first two hundred years, Dumfries, 1975, passim.: Dumfries & Galloway Standard, 3 Jan. 1872, p.7; 7 Feb 1872, p.7; 31 July 1872, p.5; 25 Dec 1872, p.5: Daily Record, 7 Dec. 2017, online: The Scotsman, 16 Oct 2019, online: For the new DGRI see the report on the BBC website here (retrieved Dec. 2025).

Obituary of John Starforth: Building News, 27 May 1898, p.741: Information on the local sculptor, John Currie, from William McDowall, History of the Burgh of Dumfries, Edinburgh 1867, p.864

Insch & District War Memorial Hospital

November 9, 2024November 9, 2024 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

*Insch & District Cottage Hospital, photograph from the hospital’s Annual Report of 1922 reproduced courtesy of NHS Grampian Archive*

As Remembrance Sunday approaches, I wanted to reflect on the work of the Red Cross in the First World War, on the auxiliary hospitals for war wounded that were set up in private houses, and on the founding of the cottage hospital at Insch, in Aberdeenshire, as one of the many hospitals built as a ‘lasting memorial to those who fell in the war’.

*‘We love Insch Hospital’ sign at the hospital. I noticed quite a few of these in the local area. Photographed in September 2024 ©* *H. Blakeman*

Sadly, today the Insch and District War Memorial Hospital stands empty, its future uncertain – despite strong support locally and an active Friends group.

*West wing of the hospital, south front – the memorial panel can just be seen on the right, which is to the left of the original main entrance ©* *H. Blakeman*

The cottage hospital at Insch is one of four war memorial hospitals that I know of in Scotland. There is one other in Aberdeenshire, the Kincardine O’Neil Hospital at Torphins, which opened in 1925, and there was one established at Peebles and a fourth at Lamlash on the Isle of Arran. If you search the Imperial War Museum’s register 148 records appear for hospitals, though some are memorials within older hospitals. At Leith Hospital, Edinburgh, for example, a children’s ward was added as a memorial.

*East wing of the hospital, south front. The end of the wing, beyond the chimney stack, was added in 1933-4. ©* *H. Blakeman*

Funds to build a hospital at Insch were bequeathed by William Smith, advocate, of Aberdeen, after his death in 1917.[1] In February 1919 the question of memorialising the war was discussed by local parish councils. In the parish of Premnay, the erection of a cottage hospital at Insch was considered the most suitable memorial and a committee was appointed to make arrangements.

*OS quarter-inch map of administrative areas published in 1940 CC-BY (NLS)*

Hospitals must have seemed a particularly fitting memorial, having been one of the most tangible ways in which those at home encountered war, through the many war hospitals established in Britain. Large numbers of existing hospitals were either given over entirely or in part to treat war casualties, and these were supported by auxiliary hospitals run by a coalition of the Red Cross and the Order of St John. Most of these were in private houses and adapted halls and hotels.

*Postcard of Drumrossie House, n.d.* c.1910

There were two auxiliary hospitals in or near Insch, at Drumrossie House and Leith Hall. Drumrossie House had been a Red Cross auxiliary hospital with 20 beds.[2] It served as a VAD hospital from 1914 until half-way through 1919. The patients supported the proposed war memorial hospital, helping to raise funds, one of their fund-raising events took place in March 1919 when some of the wounded and convalescent soldiers put on a concert in the Public Hall. [3]

*Leith Hall, Kennethmont, Aberdeenshire, photographed in September 2024 ©* *H. Blakeman*

Leith Hall, at Kennethmont to the west of Insch, was opened for casualties and convalescent patients from October 1914 until May 1919. Henrietta Leith Hay received a medal after the war for her work in the hospital. (She presented Leith Hall to the National Trust after the Second World War, both her husband and her son had died in 1939.) The site for the hospital at Insch was granted to the hospital managers by her husband, Charles Edward Norman Leith Hay.

*Details of the portraits of Henrietta Leith Hay and her husband that hang at Leith Hall.*

Leith Hall and Drumrossie House were two of the eleven Red Cross auxiliary hospitals in Aberdeenshire, and of the 44 in the North East of Scotland. (For a list of the hospitals see the post on First World War Auxiliary Hospitals.) The local newspapers regularly published notes of thanks for gifts to these hospitals and of entertainments put on for the patients. Amongst the lists of people thanked for gifts to the patients at Leith Hall was a Mrs Helen Scatterty of Earlsfield, Insch, who donated three-and-a-half dozen eggs in June 1917. She may have been related to the first matron of Insch Hospital, Isabella Scatterty (b.1886). Isabella grew up on her father’s farm, Mains of Boddam, and trained at Stobhill Hospital, Glasgow and then the Royal Maternity and Women’s Hospital, also in Glasgow. Latterly she had been a sister at Bangour War Hospital in Edinburgh.

*General view of the north front of Insch Hospital, photographed in September 2024, ©* *H. Blakeman*

Plans for the Insch Memorial hospital were drawn up in 1920 by the Aberdeen architect, George Bennett Mitchell (1865-1941). Mitchell had been an assistant in the firm of Jenkins & Marr, and from 1887 was architect to the surveyors’ department of Davidson & Garden, advocates of Aberdeen. In the 1920s his son, George Angus Mitchell, was working with him, becoming a partner in 1929. [4] Confusingly the local doctor in Insch was another George Mitchell, he advised on the planning and became the hospital’s chief medical officer. The plans for the hospital were also vetted by the Scottish Board of Health. This was a condition of a grant from the Board in recognition of Insch hospital providing maternity beds under the County Council’s Maternity Services and Child Welfare schemes.[5]

*Insch Hospital, rear view of extension on the east side, viewed from the north. © H. Blakeman*

The contractors for the building were as follows: mason, John Smith, of Kintore; carpentry, John Fraser, Insch; slater, George Glennie, Insch; plaster and cement work, George Robertson, Inverurie; painter, Alexander Duffus, Aberdeen and Insch; plumber, James Laing and Sons, Inverurie; electric lighting, John Souter, Insch; out-house buildings, John Morrison, carpenter and ironmonger, Insch.[6]

*Out-house or service block on north side of Insch Hospital, backing on to Rannes Street © H. Blakeman*

Many worked hard to ensure establishment and success of the hospital, including Colonel George Milne of Logie (1857-1939), who was the president of the Executive Committee of the hospital and chairman of the management committee. Milne and his wife, Florence (née Barclay) had been active in raising funds for hospitals during the war and Florence had served as County Director of the Aberdeen Red Cross. [7]. Charles W. Beattie (1872-1955), the committee secretary, was also an active supporter of the hospital, he later served as Provost of Insch and was honorary president of Insch Golf Club in 1928. In February 1939 he and the matron, Isabella Scatterty, were married – they were both in their 50s by then.[8]

*Memorial panels at Insch Hospital. These are on the outside of the building, on either side of the original main entrance © H. Blakeman*

The hospital was officially opened on 24 August 1922 by Sir Napier Burnett, a native of Fraserburgh who had become a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist. He had risen to prominence during the First World War in the administration of the emergency hospital services. In March 1920 he had been appointed director of hospital services to the Joint Council of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John. ‘In this capacity he visited probably most of the hospitals in Great Britain’ (quite a feat, even in peace time.)[9] On either side of the central entrance door are the granite tablets bearing the names of residents from Insch and Premnay parishes who had lost their lives in the war.

*Insch Hospital east wing. This wing was extended in the early 1930s, the main entrance was enclosed and a new day room added in the 1972 © H. Blakeman*

Within the entrance hall, facing the door, was an oak tablet with the names of 139 people who had died from the six parishes that contributed to the founding of the hospital. The tablet was gifted by Major Cleghorn of Drumrossie, and beneath a red cross was an inscription that read: : “Insch and District War Memorial Hospital. To the glory of God, in everlasting gratitude to all of this district who served in the Great War 1914-1918, and to the hallowed memory of those who died, this Hospital is erected”

*The newly extended hospital photographed in 1933 from the Annual Report, reproduced courtesy of NHS Grampian Archives*

Originally the hospital had just 12 beds, including three for maternity cases. The rest of the beds were allocated evenly for men and women in two three-bedded wards and two single rooms. There was an operating theatre, a sitting-room and bedroom for the matron, a bedroom for a nurse and for a maid, a kitchen, scullery and washroom. Lighting was by electricity, and the grounds were planted with trees and shrubs, and with flowers at the central entrance. [10] The plan is quite unusual for a cottage hospital, and particularly interesting because of the involvement of the Board of Health in vetting its design. It is unusual to have so many doors, presumably providing direct access to the small wards. (The original plans are in Aberdeen City Archives, but at the moment the archives are closed to the public while they move to a new home.) The doors have since been blocked, their upper parts turned into windows, but the hospital preserves a good sense of its former appearance, with original elements surviving such as the ventilation flues on the roof ridge and the timber brackets supporting the eaves.

*Looking west along the south front of the hospital © H. Blakeman*

By 1930 the hospital managers were discussing the need to increase the number of beds available, as the number of patients admitted each year was steadily rising. It was decided to add another wing to serve as a nurses’ home and allow the former staff accommodation to be reconfigured. [11] The matron’s and nurses’ bedrooms were turned into a new maternity ward with two beds and a private ward. The new wing added to the east of the main south block provided a nurses’ sitting room, seven bedrooms, linen-room, and lavatory. It continued the line of the existing hospital, and was designed to match the earlier building in style.[12]

*The day-room added on the south side of the hospital* *in 1972 and extended in 1993 © H. Blakeman*

Since 1948 the hospital has been part of the National Health Service. Additions from the 1970s include a day-room extending from the main entrance. It is perhaps more of a useful addition than a visual enhancement to the south front of the building. More attractive is the health centre of 1979, which is in scale with the original buildings. The jaunty mono-pitch roof on the north entrance range gives it character, and the shrubs and surrounding gardens soften its grey-rendered walls.

*Insch Hospital, Health Centre added in 1979, from the north ©* *H. Blakeman*

The hospital closed to patients in 2020, just two years shy of its centenary. I hope that it will survive – preferably in medical use.

*Insch Hospital, health centre added in the 1970s at the west end of the hospital. H. Blakeman*

References:

Aberdeen Evening Express, 4 Dec.1917, p.2
Aberdeen Daily Journal, 21 Dec. 1914, p.8
Aberdeen Press & Journal, 1 Jan 1919, p.1; Huntly Express, 7 March 1919, p.3
Dictionary of Scottish Architects. Aberdeen City Archives GBM/1920/7/1-10
Aberdeen Daily Journal, 23 Nov. 1920
Aberdeen Press & Journal, 24 Dec. 1920
Ibid.
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 7 Feb. 1939, p.5.
obituary of Sir Edward Napier Burnett, BMJ, 5 Jan. 1924, p.42.
Aberdeen Press & Journal, 25 Aug. 1922
Aberdeen P&J, 31 March 1930, 23 March 1932, Builder, 31 March 1933, p.559:
NHS Grampian Archives, GRHB 29/3/1 Insch and District War Memorial Hospital, Annual Reports

Astley Ainslie Hospital, Edinburgh

August 30, 2024August 30, 2024 / Harriet Richardson / 1 Comment

Astley Ainslie Hospital, gates by Thomas Hadden, photographed February 2024, © H. Blakeman

This post looks at the early history of the Astley Ainslie Hospital and the development of a more scientific approach to convalescence in the early twentieth century.

*The balcony and veranda on the south side of the new ward wing added to Canaan Park House, from* The Nursing Times, *9 Jan. 1926*

The Astley Ainslie Hospital is the main rehabilitation hospital in the NHS Lothian region. There are buildings of various dates, from the early 19th century to the early 21st century on the large site in the Grange area of Edinburgh. The hospital was established for convalescent patients from the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh by a generous bequest from David Ainslie. The site comprising four large villas and a golf course was acquired in 1921, and the architect John Jerdan commissioned to adapt one of the villas – Canaan Park – as the first phase of turning the new hospital. The house became the main administration department with a new wing added to the south for 34 female patients under the charge of Dr (Isabella) Mary Mears, the resident medical officer.

The first patients were admitted in 1923, and three years later the Nursing Times provided a description of the new institution along with a photograph of the recently built ward unit (see above). The article noted the beautiful grounds, with fine view to the Braid Hills, and that the new ward unit was ideally suited to its purpose of a ‘convalescent retreat’. Although the Astley Ainslie was intended for patients from the Royal Infirmary it was independently run, with its own body of governors, as intended by its benefactor, David Ainslie. It was on his instruction that the hospital was named after John Astley-Ainslie, David Ainslie’s nephew who had died at the young aged of 26. It was also intended that the institution should be for cases that required longer care than was provided at the Infirmary’s existing convalescent home at Corstorphine (see the Edinburgh page for more details).

*Canaan Lodge, Millbank, Canaan House and Canaan Park, on the 25-inch OS map surveyed in 1893 reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Scotland, CC-BY (NLS)*

The Nursing Times described the entrance hall of Canaan Park House as having a piano and that it was ‘bright with pots of growing chrysanthemums’. The colour scheme generally was white and green – colours chosen for their calming and restful qualities. No operations were to be conducted at the hospital, but post-operative treatment, such as changing dressings, was one of the potential nursing duties. Initially the patients were generally surgical, tuberculosis or adolescent heart cases. The wards were ‘big, bright, airy places built on the horseshoe plan’, the balcony and veranda were accessed from large French windows, and had five beds on each, with a further twelve within the ward. Some patients slept out on the balcony or veranda in winter and summer. As well as the two wards, the patients had the use of a dining-room that also served as a recreation room.

*Canaan Park House, with the 1920s ward wing on far right. Photographed February 2024, © H. Blakeman*

The ample grounds at the Astley Ainslie allowed out-door recreation including bowls, croquet and clock golf. Patients could also undertake gardening in the vegetable garden. Indoors there was a well-stocked library, while concerts, lectures and entertainments were organised regularly.

*Canaan House* *in 2024*, *© H. Blakeman*

Flowers, fruit and vegetables were supplied from the gardens, and the original gardeners to the large houses were retained with a view to preserving the ‘old-world appearance’ of the grounds. An ample supply of fresh produce was a vital part of providing patients with a nutritious diet, with a stress on milk, butter, eggs, green vegetables and fruit. A considerable part of the estate was laid out as a kitchen and fruit garden in order to maintain a constant supply. The best diet for convalescents was an ongoing subject of study. Early experiments at the Astley Ainslie in trying to encourage patients to consume plenty of green vegetables, especially when raw – such as lettuce and tomatoes – was too much of a novelty for some, being ‘often neither appreciated nor eaten without persuasion’.[J. Cunningham, Edinburgh Medical Journal, 1931 v.38 (9), p.146.]

*OS map revised 1913, part of site acquired for the hospital CC-BY (NLS)*

The beneficial effects of nature, of fresh air, sunlight and pleasant grounds, had long been recognised as an important part of the therapeutic treatment of convalescent patients and before the development of effective drugs to treat tuberculosis had been shown to slow the progress of that disease in some patients. Sanatoria were designed with sun-trapping angled plans – a butterfly, or half-butterfly plan – with verandas in front onto which beds could be wheeled. This was the form adopted for the new blocks built in the hospital grounds, but even in the first ward extension to Canaan Park House a sun-trap was created where ‘screen-enclosed, sun bathing takes place in summer’ and a wooden shelter was built where patients could sit out and enjoy ‘the wintry sunshine, each clad in a big coat and wrapped about with a warm fleecy blanket’.

*East Pavilion, north elevation, photographed February 2024 © H. Blakeman*

Two neighbouring villas were acquired in the 1920s to extend the site: Morelands and St Roque House. In the second half of this decade the first two new hospital blocks and a nurses’ home were constructed. For the design of the new buildings the governors turned to the architects Auldjo Jamieson and Arnott, who had taken over the practice of Sydney Mitchell and Wilson, architects of many hospital buildings including extensions to the Royal Infirmary. The grandly named and wealthy Ernest Arthur Oliphant Auldjo Jamieson (1880-1937) had worked in Mitchell and Wilson’s office early in his career before setting up on his own account around 1909-10, but soon after the two practices were merged and James Alexander Arnott (1871-1950) joined as a partner.

*OS map revised 1932 showing the East and West Pavilions, Scientific block, Kitchen Block and Nurses’ Home CC-BY (NLS)*

The 1920s hospital blocks (now the East and West Pavilions) were single-storey, butterfly-plan buildings built on the site of the ladies’ golf course (see maps above and below). The slope of the site gave uninterrupted views of Blackford Hill to the south.

*Millbank Pavilion, south elevation, photographed February 2024*, © *H. Blakeman*

A third butterfly-plan pavilion was built on the site of Millbank House which was acquired by the governors around 1930. At the same time a new main entrance to the site was created on Grange Loan with its fine wrought-iron gates made by Thomas Hadden in his characteristic Arts & Crafts style of flowing natural forms (see photographs at the top of the post and below). The gates were hung between square sentry pavilions with pyramidal roofs and over-sized circular window.

*The ornamental wrought iron gates made by Thomas Hadden, photographed when newly installed, image from HES Archives*

The nurses’ home was completed in 1930, a two-storey and attic, H-plan building, built on the site of South Bank House, just west of the former golf course. Plans of the home had been drawn up by 1925 when they were published in the Architects’ Journal. It followed the conventions of the time, with single bed-rooms for 45 nurses and shared bathrooms and toilets on the upper floors, and communal recreation rooms on the ground floor.

*Nurses’ Home, north elevation, photographed February 2024 © H. Blakeman*

Just north of the nurses’ home a central kitchen block was built, now the Blackford Pavilion and still functioning as a kitchen and canteen. It also houses NHS Lothian’s health promotion Resource Centre. A covered corridor connects the centre to the nurses’ home.

*The Blackford Pavilion* *© H. Blakeman*

A scientific block was amongst the early buildings at the Astley Ainslie, reflecting the governors’ decision that the institution should act as a centre for investigating the problems connected with convalescence and the greater prominence of rehabilitation in the years after the First World War. The large numbers of military personnel who became disabled in action led to developments in prosthetics and a range of treatments or therapies. The scientific block was designed in more formal style than the ward pavilions, its south front featuring an arcade of Grecian Doric columns within which the main entrance sits behind a pair of columns set in Antis. It housed a gymnasium for physiotherapy (at the time termed ‘massage’ and remedial exercises – a reminder of physiotherapy’s origins in ‘Swedish Gymnastics’). It also had an electric department with x-ray equipment, rooms for ultra-violet radiation and electric therapeutics, a dentist’s room, dispensary and research laboratory. Heliotherapy was an important part of convalescent treatment, but the unreliability of the weather soon led to the addition of an artificial sunlight lamp.

*Scientific Block, photographed February 2024, © H. Blakeman.*

In April 1929 Lieutenant-Colonel John Cunningham was appointed as the Medical Superintendent of the Institution. He delivered a number of papers about the new science of convalescence to the Edinburgh Medical Society that were subsequently published in the Society’s journal. In a paper of 1931 he noted that the organised study of convalescence and the methods of dealing with it were of recent growth, and that there were few publications on the subject. Historically the main ingredients of successful convalescence were ‘moderation in exercise, peace of mind, tranquil sleep, and proper hygiene’. [Cunningham, ‘The Convalescent State’, Edinburgh Medical Journal, 1931, vol.38 (9), p.137.] However, until at least the mid-19th century, convalescence had been available only to the rich – ‘the poor man had no time to be sick, and still less were facilities for recovery provided for him’. [Idem. p.138.]

*View of the Scientific block from the west* *© H. Blakeman*

The earliest convalescent hospital founded in Britain was probably the Metropolitan Convalescent Institution, founded in 1841 and later moving to purpose-built accommodation at Walton-on-Thames (later named Ellesmere Hospital, see the Surrey page for more details). The type of convalescent home that developed concentrated on cases that were already well on the way to recovery. Most were unable to take patients who required active medical attention.

*Metropolitan Convalescent Institution, later Ellesmere Hospital, Surrey Wellcome Collection*

The Health Insurance Acts improved access to basic convalescence to the working classes (see Convalescing in Colwyn Bay for more details). There had long been an economic advantage to giving the work force a proper opportunity to convalescence – both from an employers’ point of view and for hospitals. Apart from freeing beds in an acute hospital by transferring convalescents to a different setting, the relative cost per bed of a convalescent home was significantly less than for an acute hospital.

During the First World War convalescent establishments were provided as well as hospitals for the military. This spurred advances in the study and treatment of convalescence, as well as bolstering the arguments for separate convalescent institutions that were specially designed and equipped for the purpose. Classification of convalescent patients was developed to outline the different requirements of particular groups, such as cardiac, orthopaedic or psychiatric.

*Occupational Therapy Unit, photographed February 2024 © H. Blakeman*

By the 1920s America was forging ahead in refining the treatment of convalescents. The main sources of information were publication by John Bryant in the 1920s, and the example of the Burke Foundation near New York. The Burke Foundation had 300 beds and dealt with many cases previously excluded from convalescent homes, such as chronic illness and physical disabilities. Occupation and recreation as aids to recovery played an important role. There are cross-overs here with therapies in psychiatric hospitals of the time and particularly in institutions for those with learning disabilities, but the benefits of encouraging some form of occupation for convalescent patients had been recommended by many, including Florence Nightingale. Occupational therapy developed during the First World War, when it was shown to have positive effects on mental wellbeing (or in the language of the time, ‘mental tone and preventing moral deterioration).

One of the pioneering advocates of occupational therapy in Britain was Sir Robert Jones, who noted the lesson learnt during the First World War of the psychological and physical value of work. Workshops for wounded soldiers filled the hours when they weren’t undergoing treatment, usefully distracting their minds. The Canadian war hospitals were some of the first to place ‘Occupational therapy’ on an organised basis, while some of the earliest training schools for occupational therapists were established in Canada and the United States. The Astley Ainslie was one of the first to establish a school of Occupational Therapy in Scotland.

In a future post I will look at some of the later developments at the hospital.

St Vincent’s Hospital, Kingussie

August 16, 2024 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

*St Vincent’s Hospital, photographed in August 2022 © H. Blakeman*

Perched high above Kingussie sits the former St Vincent’s Hospital, empty and vulnerable to the attentions of vandals since it closed in 2021. It was replaced by the new Badenoch and Strathspey Community Hospital at Aviemore.

The history of the hospital spans more than a century. It first opened in 1901 as the Grampian Sanatorium, founded by Dr Walter de Watteville who had already begun treating patients on the open-air principle in 1898 at his home ‘Sonnhalde’. De Watteville initially added a wing to his house, with separate entrance. This has some claim to being the first privately instituted TB sanatorium in Scotland.

There was sufficient demand for treatment that de Watteville was able to build a larger sanatorium in 1900 which was opened in June 1901. It occupied a large site, of ten acres, laid out with walks – gentle exercise being part of the ‘treatment’ for TB. Patients were also thought to benefit from inhaling the scent of pine trees – of which there were many in the surrounding woods.

The new sanatorium was designed by the local architect A. Mackenzie, with Alexander Cattanach as the mason. It has a south-easterly aspect, the original bedrooms for the patients all on this side of the building with corridors behind. Their rooms had stained and polished wood floors, walls painted with ‘duresco’ (a water-based paint) and had rounded angles. The furniture was also specially designed. At the ends of the building on the ground floor were larger rooms used as dining and day-rooms. The kitchens were in a service wing at the rear, along with staff accommodation.

The distinctive round-arched windows no longer have their original glazing which were sash windows with a ‘rounded revolving fanlight’ above. Some of the rooms at the centre of the building gave out onto a veranda or balcony, via French doors. The engraved view published in Walters’ Sanatoria for Consumptives (below) shows patients lying on camp beds on the uncovered veranda in front of the hospital. The nature of the revolving fanlights can also be seen: they tilted on side pivots.

*Grampian Sanatorium (later St Vincent’s Hospital) from F. R. Walters,* Sanatoria for Consumptives, *published in 1905.*

The sanatorium was heated by open fires, lighting was by electricity. Dr de Watteville acted as the medical superintendent and his wife as matron, helped by a medical assistant, two nurses and domestic staff. [F. R. Walters, Sanatoria for Consumptives, 3^rd edn. 1905, pp.189-90.]

*Dr Walther’s Nordrach Sanatorium, from F. R. Walters, Sanatoria for Consumptives, published in 1905.*

The inspiration behind the design of the sanatorium, and the treatment conducted within it, was Nordrach Sanatorium in the Black Forest of Germany run by Dr Otto Walther. A small clutch of sanatoria were named after the German hospital in Britain – including Nordrach on Dee, Banchory (later Glen-o-Dee Hospital), and Nordrach upon Mendip, near Bristol.

*St Vincent’s Hospital, rear wing, photographed in August 2022 © H. Blakeman*

In 1917 de Watteville sold the sanatorium to Dr Felix Savy, who increased the capacity of the hospital slightly – from 18 to 27 beds by 1926. Artificial pneumothorax was made available from around 1926, Dr Savy being a pioneer of this surgical technique to collapse the infected lung. He also introduced X-ray equipment, UV light and laboratory facilities.

In 1934 the sanatorium was purchased by the Sisters of the Order of the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, although Dr Savy remained as the physician in charge. The Sisters had the rear extension built as living quarters, and created a chapel above the main entrance. The photographer, Oscar Marzaroli, was a patient in the 1940s. The sanatorium was not transferred to the NHS in 1948, although it was used for NHS patients for a few years until the demand for beds for TB cases declined. By the mid-1950s the decline in TB led to many former sanatoria being adapted to new uses. St Vincent’s became a home for the elderly in 1956. As the residents increasingly required nursing care, by the early 1970s the Order planned to create wards for geriatric patients (this may relate to work by J. G. Quigley and Partners, architects, Glasgow noted on the Dictionary of Scottish Architects for 1969-71 for the Sisters.). The interior was remodelled in 1973-4 to convert the ground floor into a geriatric hospital unit, run by Grampian Health Board, while the upper floor remained a residential home run by Highland Regional Council. As part of the works, a large new day room was created at the west side, the old fireplaces and chimneys removed. It was still run by the Sisters of the Order, but finding staff was proving increasingly difficult and in 1986 the home hospital was bought by the NHS. The upper floor was converted to provide a psychogeriatric unit in 1988-9. [J. C. Leslie adn S. J. Leslie, The Hospitals of Badenoch & Strathspey, 2022.]

Portree Hospital

December 19, 2022May 3, 2023 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

In the early 1960s the NHS built a new hospital at Portree and substantially enlarged and extended the Mackinnon Memorial Hospital at Broadford. There was considerable controversy surrounding these projects at the time. From a cost and efficiency point of view, the Northern Regional Hospital Board wanted just one central hospital and Broadford was their preferred location being nearer to the mainland and therefore easier for visiting consultant specialists. But Skye is a large island community, with its population fairly evenly spread between north a south, making travel on narrow roads in bad weather less than ideal, especially for maternity cases. Even today, the journey by car from the far north of the island to the bridge that links Skye to the mainland in the south can take around two hours, in good weather during the summer. Until the mid-1990s you would have to add in the time for a ferry crossing to the mainland, as the bridge was only opened in 1995.

*View of the garden front of Portree Hospital*, *photographed October 2020, © H. Richardson*

The two new hospital buildings still resulted in a reduced and rationalised service, as four hospitals had been transferred to the National Health Service in 1948, whereas today just two are in operation. The new hospital at Portree replaced the old fever hospital there and prompted the closure of the John Martin Hospital at Uig (also in the north of the island). The small Gesto Hospital, at Edinbane continued in use until 2007, having staved off successive attempts at closure from the 1990s.

*Former Gesto Hospital, Edinbane, Skye, photographed in 2010, © Carol Walker*

Replacing the hospitals on Skye with a single new one had been proposed during the Second World War when the existing hospitals had been surveyed in 1942 as part of the groundwork leading up to establishing a national health service after the war. This national survey of hospital buildings was undertaken by pairs of medical professionals who were assigned one of five regions. Questionnaires were sent out to all the hospitals providing basic information about the number of beds available, the type of patients catered for, etc. The Survey was published in 1946, and fairly recently the Wellcome Library has digitised the reports which can be accessed online either via the Wellcome or on the Internet Archive.

*View of Portree Harbour. The hospital is further round to the right, out of shot. Photographed October 2020, © H. Richardson,*

The Report for the Northern Region suggested that Portree might be the most suitable location for this single new hospital for the island. But no further progress was made either immediately after the war or in the early years following the establishment of the National Health Service in 1948. When the Northern Regional Hospital Board decided to build a new hospital it favoured Broadford over Portree, as not only was it more convenient for consultants from the mainland, but a hospital located there could also serve parts of the adjacent mainland. The local Board of Management and the local general practitioners were brought on side, and the proposal was supported by the Department of Health. However, when it was announced to the public in 1951 there was a local outcry. The Secretary of State for Scotland, James Stuart, promised the local Inverness MP, Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton, that in view of the strong feeling in Skye, he would see that no final decision on the location of the new hospital would be made without ‘direct consultation with local people’.

*Large-scale OS map surveyed 1965, reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland (CC-BY) NLS*

Matters stalled following the economic restrictions imposed after 1951, with the outbreak of the Korean War and Britain’s support of the U.S.A. leading to funds being redirected from welfare to re-armament. The question of a new hospital for Skye was not revived until 1954 when fresh proposals for an addition of 12 beds to the Broadford hospital was put forward to the Department of Health by the Chairman of the Northern Regional Hospital Board. Although the Department was supportive, there remained the issue of the Secretary of State’s promise about local consultation.

*View of the north side of the hospital, with the original out-patients’ wing on the right*, *photographed October 2020, © H. Richardson,*

How that consultation might be done was discussed between the Regional Board and the Department’s officers in the Spring of 1956. The limited funding and a general lack of clear understanding between the Department in Edinburgh and the Regional Board in Inverness meant that no further progress was made. In 1958 an internal inquiry was held, the Department being reconciled to the need to go to exceptional lengths to placate local feeling. The compromise reached was to run two hospitals, with a new one at Portree and an extension to the one in Broadford, much to the irritation of the Regional Board who only gave up on their wish for a single, larger hospital, with considerable reluctance.

*Detailed view of the former out-patients’ wing, with its curved end*, *photographed October 2020, © H. Richardson,*

The Regional Architect, David Polson Hall, was put in charge of the design and planning of the new buildings. Polson Hall was originally from Stonehaven and had studied architecture in Aberdeen in the 1920s before becoming chief assistant to the architect R. Leslie Rollo in 1931. In 1954, Polson Hall and colleagues at the Regional Board visited the RIBA Exhibition on the Design of Health Buildings. The two projects on Skye proceeded in tandem. Estimates for the Portree hospital were received in 1961, but were higher than the amount available so revisions to the plans had to be made. Final working drawings were not completed until May 1962, and work finally got under way in March 1963.

*View from the north-west*, *photographed October 2020, © H. Richardson*

It is difficult not to see Portree hospital as old-fashioned, in architectural style if not in plan. It is a small L-shaped, single-storey and attic building set into the hillside. A contemporary photograph (see below) taken when the hospital was opened makes it appear over-scaled compared with the neighbouring houses, despite its smallness as a hospital. The construction was traditional, in synthetic stone and brickwork, roughcast with pitched roof finished in green slates. The long, west side of the hospital contained the in-patient accommodation, with wards and a day room on the west side of the long axial corridor commanding a fine view over the bay (see plan below). The east side of the corridor had ancillary rooms: WCs, bath, sterilising room, labour room, stores and Matron’s office. The main entrance was on this side, leading to a waiting area and staff office. There were twelve beds in all, half of which were for maternity cases. The largest ward had four beds, the others were three twin rooms and two singles.

*View of Portree Hospital from across the estuary just after it opened. From* The Hospital, *September 1965*

The shorter wing to the north housed a small out-patients’ clinic, with a separate entrance and waiting area. The hospital was to be attended by visiting consultants but would be run by two local practitioners, the first in post were Dr John Morrison of Portree and Dr Calum Og MacRae from Uig.

*Photograph taken in about 1989-90 before the curved end of the out-patients’ wing was filled in and raised a storey.* *© H. Richardson,*

At the entrance to the out-patients’ clinic, the chief architectural feature was the semi-circular porch – a faint echo of a pre-war era of an ocean liner moderne aesthetic. Its original perky seaside charm was marred by infilling and the addition of a second storey in 2005-6. Prosaically enough, the porch was intended as a pram shelter. The attic floor had accommodation for ten resident staff. There were fireplaces in the sitting rooms in addition to central heating, the decoration was described in The Hospital as ‘contemporary in light tone colours with wallpaper used in the sitting rooms, main hall, etc. The furnishings are all of contemporary design in vivid bright colours to show up against the light-coloured walls.’

*Ground plan of the hospital as originally built, from* The Hospital, *September 1965*

Portree hospital was officially opened on 31 March 1965 by A. A. Hughes, Under-Secretary at the Scottish home and Health Department. I am not quite sure what its future is. A new hospital has been built next to the MacKinnon Memorial at Broadford, so the fate of the older hospital there is perhaps also in doubt.

Further Information and references: J. C. Leslie and S. J. Leslie, History of Highland Hospitals The Hospitals of Skye, 2011, Old Manse Books, Avoch, Scotland. Department of Health files at the National Records of Scotland, Minutes of the Northern Regional Hospital Board are at Highlands Archives in Inverness.

Davidson Hospital, Girvan

December 10, 2022May 3, 2023 / Harriet Richardson / 10 Comments

*Davidson Cottage Hospital, Girvan, photograph October 2022 © H. Richardson*

At the end of September my husband, Chris, and I took a trip to the south-west corner of Scotland, to the Rhins of Galloway. On the way there and on the way back we stopped off at various hospitals, including this one at Girvan, on the Ayrshire coast.

*General view of the hospital from The Avenue. Photographed October 2022 ©* H. Richardson

This small cottage hospital was designed by the Glasgow firm of architects Watson, Salmond and Gray and built in 1921-2. It was officially opened on 15 June 1922. Thomas Davidson founded and endowed the hospital as a memorial to his mother. The Builder described the style as ‘a free treatment of the Scottish domestic’ and noted that the roofs were slated with Tilberthwaite slates (silver grey). The builders were the local masons, Thomas Blair & Son, who fashioned the handsome Auchenheath stone. They worked with J. & D. Meikle, joiners; William Auld & Son, slater, and William Miller, plasterer, all from Ayr. Tile work was carried out by Robert Brown & Sons of Paisley and the plumbing was done by William Anderson, Ltd, Glasgow. [The Builder, 1 July 1921, p.10.]

*The main front of the hospital. It has been boarded up for about eight years. Photograph © H. Richardson*

When it was visited in the 1940s as part of the Scottish Hospitals Survey it was praised for its good condition. At that time it had 14 beds in two wards, and two single rooms available for maternity cases. It was mostly used for accident cases and work connected with the local medical practitioners. It had a fairly well-equipped operating theatres and good domestic offices.

*Detail of the main front. The inscription over the door reads ‘The Davidson Hospital’. Photograph © H. Richardson*

It is one of my favourite Scottish cottage hospitals, but it has been on the Register of Buildings at Risk since 2014. It has been replaced by a new Community Hospital on the outskirts of Girvan.

*This extension was added in 1971. An effort was made to respect the original building, being small, low, set back and with stone cladding.*

Plans to turn the building into an Enterprise Centre came to nothing. More recently an application was submitted for the conversion of the building into two dwellings. I do hope that the former hospital will be cherished by its new owners.

*Rear of the building. The single storey wing probably contained the kitchens, but I have never seen the original plans of the building*

*Lovely matching wing to the rear of the main building, although it looks of a date with the original building, it must have been built after 1963 as it does not appear on the OS map of that date.*

*Large-scale OS map, surveyed 1963. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland (CC-BY) NLS*

former Royal Alexandra Infirmary, Paisley revisited

September 26, 2021May 1, 2023 / Harriet Richardson / 5 Comments

The other day I was searching through boxes of old photographs and came across a bundle of colour negatives which turned out to be photographs that I had taken of the Royal Alexandra back in 1988. It would have been great to have had them when I wrote the blog post on the former Royal Alexandra Infirmary, Paisley back in December 2016, but better late than never! I would be the first to admit that the photos are for the most part pretty terrible, and scanning the negatives may not have improved them. However, I thought it would be worth sharing them in a new post.

*Paisley, Royal Alexandra Infirmary. Photographed in 1988 © H. Richardson*

The Royal Alexandra Infirmary was built between about 1894 and 1902, to designs by the architect T. G. Abercrombie. Above is a detail of the ends of two of the ward blocks with their semi-circular sun balconies. The square tower to the right housed the WCs and wash-hand basins. These ‘sanitary towers’ were typical adjuncts to the ends of Victorian hospital ward pavilions. Often there were a pair of towers with a simple balcony strung between them – as at St Thomas’s Hospital in London or the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh’s Lauriston Place buildings (now the Quartermile development).

The photographs above and below show the main east front the infirmary. You can just glimpse the balconies of two more ward pavilions behind on the top photograph, and on the right the circular ward tower. This main range has been converted into private flats, and re-named Alexandra Gate. Back in 1988 the hospital had not long closed. It was replaced by the new Royal Alexandra Hospital, off Craw Road to the south west. That was built roughly on the sites of the former Riccartsbar Hospital and the Craw Road Annexe.

Circular wards are very rare in Britain. There was a brief fashion for them around the turn of the 19th to the 20th centuries. I think the only other one built in Scotland was in Kirkcaldy at the old cottage hospital there – long since demolished. I have an old postcard that shows the hospital which you can find on the Fife page of this site. At the apex of the roof of the ward tower is a lantern or cupola that was part of the ventilation system. They feature along the ridge of the ward pavilions and atop the sanitary towers. It is not uncommon to find this kind of decorative treatment of a functional element, such as the ventilation system, in hospital architecture of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

I barely remember visiting the site – let alone having managed to get access to the interior, but here are two snaps of the interior of the circular ward. Rather gloomy I’m afraid, but hopefully you get an impression of what it was like.

You can see the rails from which the bed curtains would have been hung. That will have been a post-war addition. Originally the beds would not have had individual curtains. The idea of providing patients with privacy became much more important after the foundation of the National Health Service, when free hospital treatment became available to everyone. Previously charitable hospitals, or voluntary hospitals, such as the Royal Alexandra were designed to provide free treatment for the poor. Wealthy patients were either treated at home, in a private nursing home or a paying patients wing of a voluntary hospital. By the 1920s and 1930s different standards of hospital accommodation for the poor and the well off were common, sometimes even in the same institution.

*OS Map from 1967 showing the layout of the infirmary, with the nurses’ home to the north (marked N) and the Lodge on the east (L). National Library of Scotland Maps CC-BY (NLS)*

*Paisley, Royal Alexandra Infirmary, former Nurses’ Home. Photographed in 1988 © H. Richardson*

*The nurses’ home after conversion to flats photographed in 2013. *© Copyright Thomas Nugent and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence*.*

The Nurses’ Home was as grand as the hospital itself, with a rich array of decorative elements. It is Scottish Baronial in style, with turrets and crowstepped gables, although the tall chimneys, dormer windows and this broad arched entrance have some of the sinuous elegance that is typical of Glasgow’s late 19th and early 20th century buildings. This is particularly evident in the sculptural elements, such as the female head on the keystone over the entrance.

*Entrance to the Nurses’ Home, photographed in 1988*

The Nurses’ Home is one of the survivors on the site, having been converted into flats. It is named after Peter Coats, who had paid for its construction. Coats was one of the brothers that owned the great thread manufacturing company in Paisley; Peter managed the company’s finances. The nurses’ home was built before the hospital itself, and was opened 1896. There is an inscription round the archway which reads ‘They brought unto him sick people and he healed them’, and the two shields are carved with the thistle and the rose. The hospital replaced an earlier infirmary in the town, located near Bridge Street by the river, which had originated with a dispensary for the poor in the late 18th century.

*A view of the former nurses’ home from the south east, taken in 1988* © H. Richardson

*The nurses’ home after conversion, photographed in 2010 © Norrie Porter*

The two images above of nurses’ home show the transformation from abandoned and boarded up building to well-cared for flats. It is particularly good to see that the original small-paned glazing has been either kept or reproduced, and the tall chimneys preserved. .

*The entrance lodge to the hospital, photographed in 1988. ©* H. Richardson

*The Lodge photographed in 2010 © Norrie Porter*

The former entrance range to the infirmary has been converted for use as a nursery. It originally housed a dispensary and opened in 1902. The gate piers are very striking, the banded stonework picks up on the chunky banded pilasters flanking the gabled bays of the lodge. There is another fine stone gateway that used to lead in to the south of the infirmary site further down Neilston Road, that now gives pedestrian access to the flats that have been built there.

*Western ward pavilion of the infirmary, viewed from the east, photographed in 1988*. © H. Richardson

If you explore Google maps on street view for the old infirmary you can tour round most of the buildings, and really get a sense of how those that have not been converted into flats decayed between about 2011 and 2019, and obviously how much more ruinous it has become since the late 1980s.

*Entrance to the administration block on the north side of the infirmary, photographed in 1988*.© H. Richardson

The Falkirk Ward

March 1, 2020February 26, 2023 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

The Falkirk Ward was designed by the Department of Health for Scotland in the 1960s. It was an experimental ward, a prototype to be tested for its efficiency and flexibility. If successful, it was to be rolled out in the new district general hospitals planned to be built across Scotland as promised by the Hospital Plan of 1962. In the 1990s it was selected by DoCoMoMo as one of Scotland’s key 20th Century Modern architectural monuments. It was one of 60 post-war buildings which were deemed to be of particular significance in terms of their design or style.

*Looking towards the Falkirk Ward Unit from the south, photographed in 1991* © RCAHMS

The ward block was erected at the existing Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary. The Infirmary had been built in 1926-31 to replace an older cottage hospital and was officially opened by Prince George, later Duke of Kent, in January 1932. It had been designed in a sparse Neo‑Georgian style by the local architect, W. J. Gibson, with advice from Dr D. J. Mackintosh, Medical Superintendent of Glasgow’s Western Infirmary. Mackintosh was an inveterate giver of advice to hospital boards of management, and author of Construction Equipment and Management of a General Hospital published in 1916. The architect, William Gibson, had a family connection with the infirmary as his mother, Harriette Hicks Gibson, had been the main force behind the foundation of the original cottage hospital. His father, John Edward Gibson, was managing partner of the Camelon Ironworks in Falkirk.

Falkirk Royal Infirmary, *photographed by in 2008. These buildings were demolished some time after 2010. © Copyright John Lord*

Funds were raised to add a nurses’ home in the late 1930s and a competition held for the design, limited to architects practising in Scotland. First prize went to the firm of Rowand Anderson, Paul & Partners, Stuart R. Matthew came second and a local firm, T. M. Copland & Blakey were placed third by the assessor, C. G. Soutar. [AJ, 22 Dec 1938, p.1013.] The outbreak of the Second World War resulted in the plans being postponed and eventually abandoned, instead nine Emergency Medical Scheme huts were built on the site (a further two were added later).

O.S. 1:1250 Map, Surveyed in 1951, showing the 1920s-30s infirmary at the top/north side of the site, and the EMS hutted annexe to the south. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.

Falkirk Infirmary was one of eleven institutions in Scotland selected by the Department of Health for hutted annexes to provide for the anticipated air-raid casualties. The eleven sites comprised four local authority hospitals (Robroyston, and Mearnskirk, in Glasgow; Hairmyres, Lanarkshire; and Ashludie, Dundee) four voluntary hospitals (Astley Ainslie, Edinburgh; Victoria Infirmary Auxiliary Hospital, Busby, Glasgow; Falkirk Royal Infirmary; and Stirling Royal Infirmary), and three mental hospitals (Gartloch, Glasgow; Bangour, Edinburgh; and Larbert). The huts, measuring around 144ft by 24ft, were each to contain 36 beds, and were to be built and maintained by the Office of Works. [The Lancet, 22 April 1939, p.943.]

*Extract from the OS Air Photo Mosaics, 1944-50. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland*

The executive architects of the Falkirk Ward who worked in conjunction with the Scottish Home and Health Department and Western Regional Hospital Board were Keppie Henderson and Partners. The design was drawn up by the Hospital Planning Group of the Scottish Home and Health Department, comprising two architects – John Ogilvie and Mr Bruce, Dr Hunter and Miss McNaught on the medical and work-study side, Mr Rendle for administrative expertise, and Mr. Wotherspoon, engineer. Plans were finalised in October 1962 and work began in the following year. The new unit was officially opened by Bruce Millan M.P., Under Secretary of State for Scotland, on 4 November 1966, although one of the wards was brought into use towards the end of 1965. Patients were moved into it from two overcrowded wards in the old hospital. One of the consultant surgeons, Mr R. G. Main, noted that the old hospital’s surgical unit (which the new block replaced) had 65 beds consisting of one male ward and one female ward, but they sometimes added in as many as ten extra beds in the middle of each ward in order to cope with the waiting list. He recalled how ‘A ward round could be likened to a stroll through Glasgow Central Station on Fair Saturday!’ [SHHD, Hospital Design in Use 4 The Falkirk Ward, Edinburgh, HMSO 1969, p.39.]

*The Falkirk Ward Unit, photographed in 1991* © RCAHMS

The Falkirk ward was developed in order to provide greater ‘privacy, amenity and better facilities for caring for patients and so set standards for National Health Service hospitals which might be generally acceptable for many years to come’. [The Hospital, Feb 1968, p.65.] It was an experiment in design incorporating several features which were being contemplated or proposed for new hospitals but had not yet been tried out in Britain. It was a complete departure from the standard Nightingale ward, and involved a move towards much smaller ward units. It was not considered viable to provide only single and double rooms which were by then current in American hospitals. This would have created too many operational and staffing difficulties and greatly increased the running costs. For these reasons a combination of four‑bed wards and single rooms was selected, with a ward floor of 60 beds, including twelve for intensive care.

*Falkirk Ward Unit, First-floor, reception* © RCAHMS

In addition to the experimental ward block, a two-storey service building was constructed as part of a general scheme of reconstruction at the infirmary. This addition provided kitchen, staff dining-room, pharmacy and central stores, and was also completed in 1965. In that year work began to design a new out-patients’ department. This, too, was designed by members of the Hospital Planning Committee of the Scottish Home and Health Department. The team in this instance comprised one of the few female architects employed by the NHS in Scotland in the 1960s, M. Justin Blanco White, Dr Hunter and Miss McNaught were the medical advisers and Mr Rendle the administrative adviser.

*Interior of the Falkirk Ward, with the nurses’ station on the left. Photographed in 1991. © RCAHMS*

The new out-patients’ department was intended to be a demonstration building embodying the principles behind the Department’s Planning Note (the guidelines which were to be followed throughout the country for new out-patient departments). It was part of the wider strategy of devising standard hospital departments. In the mid-1960s the Department thought that the advantages of standardisation of departments would be increased if a standardised system of building and the use of common structural components were adopted. The model plan of the Falkirk out-patients’ department was also designed to illustrate the recommendations for A&E departments, especially regarding standard rooms for both diagnosis and treatment of either new or returning patients ‘walking, in wheel chairs or on a trolley’. They were also trialling a short-stay ward and operating theatre shared between out-patients and A&E.

Design work on the out-patients’ department continued through 1966-9. In 1969, with the plans nearing completion, work began to clear the site for the new department. Construction began in 1970, and the department was completed in 1972, having cost £881,000. It was equipped and furnished ready for use the following year.

With the reorganisation of the National Health Service in 1974, the running of Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary passed from the Western Regional Hospitals Board to the newly established Forth Valley Health Board. One of the first schemes undertaken by the new Health Board was the upgrading of the war-time hospital huts, completed in 1976.

*Windsor Unit, built in 1984-6. Photographed in 2008. © Tom Sargent (cc-by-sa/2.0)*

The next major development took place in the 1980s with the addition of the Windsor Unit. This project was approved in 1979 and was intended to provide 176 maternity and geriatric beds. Work began in April 1984, on the scheme estimated to cost £8.7m and was scheduled for completion in 1986. The three storey block was very much of its time, the design made effective use of contrasting colours and materials, with the rich brown brick threaded with orange-red brick stripes. Despite being of relatively recent date, the unit had been decommissioned by October 2010, after the opening of Forth Valley Hospital, and was subsequently demolished.

Brooksby House, Largs. From Yachting Residence to Seaside Convalescent Home.

June 30, 2019May 1, 2023 / Harriet Richardson / 2 Comments

For many decades, Brooksby House was the convalescent home for Glasgow’s Victoria Infirmary. The Governors of the Infirmary purchased this substantial villa by the sea-front at Largs in 1896 and it opened the following year with accommodation for 24 patients.

*Postcard of Brooksby House, postmarked 1910. Reproduced by permission of H. Martin*

Convalescent Homes were a common aspect of health care for about a century. They first emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in an attempt to solve the problem of patients discharged from hospital who did not fully recuperate, either from having to return to work too soon, poor sanitary conditions in the home, or inadequate nourishment. In the late-eighteenth century some general hospitals began to provide convalescent wards and a few of the more enlightened workhouse infirmaries had convalescent wards around the mid-nineteenth century.

The former Metropolitan Convalescent Institution, later Ellesmere Hospital, Walton-on-Thames. Photographed in 1993 © H. Richardson. The hospital closed in 1989, and some time after 1998 was converted into private flats.

The first convalescent home in England seems to have been the Metropolitan Convalescent Institution. It grew from an ad hoc arrangement between Theodore Monro, a medical student at Barts Hospital in the City of London and his brother, a vicar in Harrow Weald, whereby patients discharged from the hospital were lodged with families in the Harrow Weald to recuperate. Monro wanted to provide an asylum in the country, where pure air, rest and nutritious diet would speed recovery. In 1842 a vacant workhouse in Carshalton provided a more formal home for the nascent institution, but a purpose-built home was erected in 1852-4 near Walton-on-Thames, designed by Joseph Clarke in a handsome Italianate style (later renamed Ellesmere Hospital).

Despite its success, and increasing awareness of the usefulness of convalescent homes, there was a lapse of some years before any more homes were built. This changed during the 1860s, with homes built in Bournemouth (the Herbert Memorial), Wimbledon (the Atkinson Morley), Whitley Bay (Prudhoe Memorial), and various other locations. The first in Scotland was established at Dunoon in 1869 (the Dunoon Homes).

*The Prudhoe Memorial Convalescent Home, Whitley Bay, reproduced from the Wellcome Collection, CC BY*

The earliest purpose-built homes were designed on hospital-like lines with large nightingale-style wards. Florence Nightingale herself commended a more domestic scale and appearance, and published an ideal plan in 1863 for a convalescent hospital arranged as three cottages, linked by covered ways.

*Florence Nightingale’s ideal convalescent home, plan and elevation, from* Notes on Hospitals, *London, 1863*

Like Brooksby House, many convalescent homes were established in converted houses. Brooksby was originally built around 1837-40 as a yachting residence for a Glasgow merchant, Matthew Perston. It is attributed to the architect David Hamilton, or his son James, under the partnership they formed of D & J Hamilton. Designed in a fashionable though restrained Italian Renaissance style, the main elevation faces west, towards the sea, with a verandah, now missing its canopy, in front of the central projecting three bays. The main entrance was on the south side, with a grand porch sheltering the doorway. The house had particularly fine interiors, with plaster ceilings, chimney-pieces and a painted armorial ceiling in the rooms on the ground floor.

*Brooksby House, photographed in June 2018 by Ian Rainey. © Copyright Ian Rainey and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.*

Perston already had a house in Largs by 1836, when he was the owner of the Yacht ‘Wave’, though his address is not give as Brooksby in the newspapers until 1845. In 1839 he had won a challenge cup with Wave and he had been elected a steward of the Royal Northern Yacht Club by 1844. The Club’s Regatta was held in Largs in that year. In 1846 he was listed as a shareholder of the Glasgow, Largs and Milport Steam-boat Company, but his main business was the Bothwell Street Spinning Company, Glasgow. Perston was bankrupted in 1847, and had to put Brooksby House up for sale or to let. A buyer proved hard to find, and a sale of his wines, port, madeira, sherry etc along with much of his household furniture was held in June 1848. The following year, in October 1849, the house was advertised for sale again, at the reduced price of £3,700, despite having cost £10,000 to build. It was described as a splendid marine residence. It had three reception rooms, seven bedrooms, as well as a bathroom and hot and cold water.

*Extract from the 1st edition OS map, surveyed in 1855. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland*

By the 1850s Brooksby had become the home of Robert Graham, a Justice of the Peace for Ayrshire. Graham senior had died by the mid-1860s, but his daughter, Gertrude Schuyler Ramsay, wife of George Gilbert Ramsay, Professor of Humanity at the University of Glasgow, and his son, R. C. Graham and his wife, retained the house. In 1897 Brooksby was acquired by the Victoria Infirmary, Glasgow. The Grahams offered to sell for £4,000, but the Infirmary Governors did not wish to pay more than £3,500. After some haggling, they agreed to meet half way. The acquisition of a convalescent home fulfilled the wishes of the Infirmary’s benefactor, Robert Couper, who had left £40,000 in his will to establish both the infirmary and an associated convalescent home. It was hoped that the home would allow patients to be discharged earlier, and thus help to lessen the waiting list.

*Ceiling in one of the ground-floor rooms, photographed by RHCME in 2012*

Brooksby House was attractive because of its seaside location, easy distance from Glasgow, and because the service buildings to the rear, including coach-house and stables, could easily be rented out and provide an income without interfering with the amenity of the home. After a swift refurbishment, the home was formally opened on 26 June 1897 by Lady Watson, wife of the Chairman of the Board of Governors, Sir Henry Watson. Accommodation was provided for 24 patients, later raised to 30.

*Painted ceiling in ground-floor room of Brooksby House, photographed in 2012 by RCHME*

Under the National Health Service Brooksby initially remained under the same Board of Management as the Victoria Infirmary. Latterly it was mostly used to provide a fortnight’s holiday for long-stay psychiatric patients from Leverndale Hospital, Glasgow. In 1983 it was transferred to Ayrshire and Arran Health Board. It provided continuing care beds until around 2006 and since 2009, has been used as the North West Ayrshire Resource Centre by the NHS.

Sources:

The Scotsman, 8 Sept 1847, p.4: Glasgow Herald, 18 April 1845, p.2; 6 March 1846, p.4; 25 Feb 1848 p.3; 29 May 1848, p.3: Greenock Advertiser, 14 December 1852 p.2: Morning Advertiser, 11 Aug 1865, p.8: Largs & Millport Weekly, 3 July 1897: NHS, Greater Glasgow & Clyde Archives, Victoria Infirmary Annual Reports: S. D. Slater & D. A. Dow, The Victoria Infirmary of Glasgow 1890 -1990, 1990, pp.245-7.

Brechin Infirmary and St Drostan’s House

May 13, 2019December 23, 2022 / Harriet Richardson / Leave a comment

*Prospect of Brechin (detail), by John Slezer from* Theatrum Scotiae, 1693. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

On a gloriously sunny day in April, I visited Brechin, primarily to see the cathedral with its extraordinary round tower, but while there walked over to Infirmary Street to see what remains of a group of buildings that for so many years took care of the health and welfare of the city: the now-closed Brechin Infirmary, largely of the 1860s, a 1970s Health Centre, the former poorhouse (built in the 1870s) and the remnants of the former infectious diseases hospital (late 1890s). Tucked in behind is a post-war hospital block, added to the site in the early 1960s, and sheltered housing built in the 2000s. This group also lies conveniently between the railway station to the south, and the cemetery to the north.

*Extract from the second edition OS map, revised in 1901, reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland*

Brechin Infirmary opened as a general voluntary hospital in 1869, but the sick poor in the city had earlier been served by a dispensary, established in about 1824 following a bequest of £50 from a Mrs Speid of Ardovie. The dispensary supplied medicine and medical attendance to the poor for free, and by the mid-1840s was said to be in a prosperous state. But the new Poor Law had placed all sick paupers under superintendence of the local Parochial Board, which had appointed a surgeon to carry out that task. As a result, ‘only some six or eight patients remain upon the dispensary lists’.[1] Over the years the dispensary’s work diminished, until it closed altogether.

*Extract from the OS Town Plan of Brechin, 1852. The Poorhouse is on City Road near the corner with Damacre Road. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland*

The first poor law institution in Brechin was opened in 1853 in City Road, locally usually known either as the almshouse, poor’s house, or parochial lodging house. It was in a large converted tenement which the Board purchased for £300 in 1852 from a Mr Thomson, writer, of Montrose. A later report suggested that the building had originally been built as a cotton factory, but that when this business failed it was sold to Mr Thomas who converted it into a dwelling house. [2]

In July 1864 plans for a hospital were first made public, after the late James Don, Esquire, of Bearhill, bequeathed £1,000 for the purpose of establishing a hospital or infirmary and dispensary in Brechin on condition that a further £1,000 was raised within 18 months by the local community. Subscriptions to the cause quickly mounted to more than £3,000, including £100 from Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, 2nd Baronet, and his brother, the Hon. R. J. Jejeebhoy. (Perhaps they were approached by someone local, the Jejeebhoys wealth and generous philanthropy, and associations with Britain, were well known.) The Earl of Dalhousie (Fox Maule-Ramsay, the 11th Earl) offered the site – considered open healthy and with convenient access by three different roads – at an annual feu-duty of £4 per acre.

*Main front of Brechin Infirmary, photographed in April 2019 © H. Richardson*

The hospital was designed by William Fettis or Fetties, and construction was carried out by local builders and craftsmen: Mr Alexander Crabb, mason; Messrs W. Black & Sons, carpenter work; John Lindsay & Son, slaters; J. & J. Thomson, plasterers; and C. Middleton & Sons, plumbers. Their tenders for the work amounted to just over £1,500. [3]

*Photograph taken on a less sparkling day, back in the late 1980s © H. Richardson*

The foundation stone was laid with full Masonic honours in May 1867 when building work was already well underway, and the first storey all but completed. The infirmary building was described at the time as ‘of the plainest description, being wholly formed of rubble work’ apart from the front wall which was ashlar. The plainness of the building was to be alleviated by the garden in front, which was to be finely laid out as pleasure grounds studded with shrubs. A kitchen garden was destined for the rear half of the garden. [4]

*West elevation of the infirmary, with later day room in the foreground, photographed in April 2019 © H. Richardson*

In May 1869 the new infirmary was formally opened by the Earl of Dalhousie. The 1901 map shows the infirmary before it was enlarged in the 1920s, with its principal front facing west, and indicating that the garden had been laid out on that side. (The garden was later built over for the present health centre.) Four wards occupied the long north-south wing, two on each floor on either side of the central entrance and with up-to-date cross-ventilated W.C.s, suggesting an awareness of the relatively recent developments in pavilion-plan hospitals on the lines recommended by Florence Nightingale. Two wards were for accidents and two for fever patients.

*View of the infirmary looking west to the rear of the earliest part of the building. Photographed in April 2019 © H. Richardson*

A major renovation, alterations and additions were carried out in 1928-9, for which the architect was David Wishart Galloway. During the work the patients were moved out to Maulesden House. The cost was largely met by a donation of £10,650 from the trustees of the late Sir James Duncan of Kinnettles. Plans were submitted to the Dean of Guild Court in September 1928. It was at this time that the new main entrance was formed, set in the gabled bay, treated as a pediment with oculus and framed by giant pilasters. The new accommodation included four private wards. The contractors were: joiners, Messrs W. Black & Son, Ltd, Brechin; plumbers, Mr J. Davidson; plasterwork, Messrs Burness Montrose; mason, Mr Rennie Brechin; slater, Mr D. Scott, Brechin. In December 1929, following the death of the architect David Galloway in a motorcycle accident, the infirmary directors appointed Maclaren, Soutar & Salmond, who had taken over Galloway’s practice, to see through the reconstruction. [5]

*View of the rear and west of Brechin Infirmary, with the health centre to the right, photographed around 1988-9 ©* *H. Richardson*

On the vacant land to the east of the infirmary a new poorhouse was built in 1879-80 to designs by James Baxter, architect, Brechin, to accommodate about 80 paupers, 51 being transferred from the old building but the Parochial Board intended also to move most of those receiving outdoor relief into the poorhouse.

*South elevation of St Drostan’s House, the former Brechin poorhouse. Photographed in April 2019 © H. Richardson*

It is in a similarly plain style to the infirmary, although the Brechin Advertiser was curiously impressed with its appearance, describing it as a ‘magnificent building’ that was an ornament and a credit to the town. The article continued:

Poor-houses have too frequently been poor in every sense of the term – poor in architecture, poor in conveniences, poor in comfort. It will be seen, however, … that the new Poor-house of Brechin possesses not only the external appearance, but all the internal appliances of a modern mansion-house. [6]

*Another photograph from that gloomy day in the 1980s, of the former poorhouse next to Brechin Infirmary ©* *H. Richardsn*

According to the same article, the architect’s plan for the poorhouse had been commended for its simplicity of design and conveniences and comfort in its internal arrangements. These comprised a room on either side of the entrance door for the Matron, and beyond these separate stairs to the upper floor. A corridor ran the length of the building on both floors. On the ground floor, on the north side of the central corridor, were two large sick rooms and two sitting rooms, and on the south side a spacious dining hall. Store rooms and bathrooms were placed at either end, a large kitchens was at the east end of the dining room. On the upper floor were the sleeping wards, and here the corridor had a glazed partition half way along separating the males from the females.

*Rear view of St Drostan’s House, looking west, behind is the eastern end of Brechin Infirmary. Photographed in April 2019 © H. Richardson*

The out buildings included a probationary ward, washing-houses, ash pits, and coal cellars. Once the new poorhouse had been completed and the inmates moved from the old building in City Road, the latter was put up for sale. It was bought by Mr J. L. Gordon, the Town Clerk, for £541, on behalf of the Town Council, with the intention of converting it into a model lodging house. [7]

*Block to the rear of St Drostan’s House, one of the original out-buildings. Photographed in April 2019 © H. Richardson*

A further report in the Brechin Advertiser following the opening of the new poorhouse, continued the enthusiastic spirit of the previous account, noting the ‘tasteful and imposing appearance’ of the main frontage, and approving of the introduction of mullioned windows to relieve the ‘baldness that might otherwise have characterise the house’. The garden had been laid out under the superintendence of Mr Annandale of the nearby Den Nursery, and the contractors were listed as: Mr J. Cribb, mason; Messrs Black & Son, joiners; Mr Masson, plasterer; Messrs Kinnear & Son, plumbers; Mr W. Bruce, painter; and Mr J. Davidson, slater – all of Brechin. [8]

South front of the former poorhouse or Parochial Lodging House, with the mullioned windows on the upper floor in the gabled bays. The bay windows on the ground floor are post-war additions. When new sheltered housing was built to the rear in the early 2000s the former poorhouse was converted to offices, but is currently empty. Photographed in April 2019 © H. Richardson

The next development of the medical services in Brechin was the establishment of an isolation hospital in the 1890s. Infectious cases, or ‘fever patients’ had up until then been cared for in the infirmary, but in times of epidemic there was insufficient accommodation there. In February 1893 an outbreak of smallpox at the Forfar and Brechin Railway huts at a time when the fever ward in the infirmary was already full prompted the Police Commission in Brechin – responsible for public health – to meet with the directors of the Infirmary to consider providing either a permanent or temporary hospital for infectious diseases. In 1895 the Brechin Police Commissioners joined forces with the District Committee and were on the search for a site. They discussed commissioning plans and estimates for a new hospital. The site must have been acquired by the end of August 1897 when an advertisement was placed in the Dundee Evening Telegraph for ‘Bricklayers (a Few Good) wanted. Apply New Hospital, Brechin’. [9]

*Detail from the 25-inch OS map revised in 1922, showing the infectious diseases hospital to the north-west of the Infirmary. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland*

The plans were drawn up by T. Martin Cappon, architect, Dundee. A caretaker was appointed in 1898, the building work probably completed by then. The hospital comprised three detached blocks, probably the administrative building, which would also have contained some staff accommodation, and two ward blocks.

*Probably a block from the former isolation hospital, to the rear of Brechin Infirmary, photographed in April 2019 © H. Richardson*

Another building on its own to the north (pictured above and below), may have been the service block containing disinfecting chambers, with boilers and disinfectors, wash-house, mortuary and stores. Thomas Martin Cappon went on to design the Forfar County Hospital in 1899. [10]

*Surviving building from the former infectious diseases hospital. Photographed in April 2019 © H. Richardson*

Post-War Changes

By 1940 the infectious diseases hospital had been converted into accommodation for the aged and infirm, but by 1950 it had been closed. The Eastern Regional Hospital Board recommended retaining the buildings for accommodation for nurses and for storage, releasing a hut at the infirmary which might be used for 30 chronic sick patients. [11]

Extract from the 1:1,250 OS map revised in 1965. This shows the 1920s extension to the infirmary, and the large post-war addition pictured below. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

At the infirmary itself the largest addition since the 1920s was made in 1958-60, when the large wing to the north was added. A bequest of nearly £14,000 from Mrs Agnes Pederson, a Brechin woman in America, was used to provide new kitchen premises, out-patients’ and physiotherapy departments, alterations to staff quarters and a day room for geriatric patients between the new accommodation blocks. [12]

*A spliced photo showing the south-east front of the post-war hospital extension. Photographed in April 2019 © H. Richardson*

The health centre was built in about 1971, and was the first to be built in Angus.[13]

See also RCAHMS, National Monuments Record of Scotland, drawings collection, for the infectious diseases hospital and www.workhouses.org for St Drostan’s House.

Montrose, Arbroath and Brechin Review; and Forfar and Kincardineshire advertiser, 13 Feb 1846, p.5
Brechin Advertiser, 14 Sept 1852, p.2: 2 March 1880, p.2
Dundee Courier, 23 Aug 1864, p.4; 12 Dec 1865, p.4; 19 Dec 1866, p.4: Dundee Advertiser, 29 Dec 1864, p.3
Montrose, Arbroath and Brechin review; and Forfar and Kincardineshire advertiser, 19 April 1867, p.4: Dundee Courier, 6 May 1867, p.4
Brechin Advertiser, 5 June 1928, p.5: Aberdeen Press & Journal, 20 Sept 1928, p.5: Dundee Courier, 10 Oct 1928, p.5; 11 Dec 1929, p.6: Dundee Evening Telegraph, 11 Dec 1929, p.10
Brechin Advertiser, 2 March 1880, p.2
Brechin Advertiser, 16 March 1880, p.2
Brechin Advertiser, 16 March 1880, p.3
Dundee Courier, 1 Feb 1893, p.3: Aberdeen Press & Journal, 12 April 1893, p.5; 19 Aug 1896, p.6: Dundee Advertiser, 10 April 1895, p.2; 23 Oct 1896, p.2: Dundee Evening Telegraph, 25 Aug 1897, p.3
Dundee Courier, 6 July 1897, p.3; 4 Oct 1899, p.4: Peterhead Sentinel and General Advertiser for Buchan District, 28 Aug 1898, p.4
Dundee Courier, 26 Jan 1950, p.4
Brechin Advertiser, 2 Dec 1958, p.5
Aberdeen P&J, 16 Feb 1971, p.31

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