Over the past few months the Northumberland pagehas been thoroughly revised and expanded. The page covers hospitals within the current county of Northumberland, there is a separate pages for Tyne & Weir that covers Newcastle. Historic maps of the sites have been added in, and short accounts of the history of each building added, mostly based on the reports written for the Royal Commission’s Hospital Survey carried out in the 1990s. At that time many more of the pre-NHS hospitals were still in use, and others still standing. Although not all the historic hospitals of Northumberland have been lost, a great many have been demolished. The Royal Commission hospital files include now rare record photography of demolished sites. They can be found at Historic England Archive, based in Swindon, and can be seen by the public.
Berwick Infirmary, photographed by Bill Harrison in 2017, from Geograph
There are now twelve NHS hospitals in Northumberland with in-patient facilities: Berwick Infirmary; Blyth Community Hospital; Alnwick Infirmary; Haltwhistle War Memorial Hospital; North Tyneside General Hospital; Hexham General Hospital; Rothbury Community Hospital; Wansbeck General Hospital; Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, Cramlington; St George’s Park, Morpeth; Ferndene, Prudhoe and Northgate Hospital, Morpeth. (There are other clinics and health centres that treat out-patients.)
Alnwick Infirmary, photographed in 2011 by Michael Dibb from Geograph
Historically Newcastle provided the main hospital services for the county, with large teaching and specialist hospitals. Most of the population was concentrated in the city, the rest of the large county having a scattered population resulting in a network of relatively small hospitals. There have been at least thirty-five hospitals in Northumberland outside Newcastle in the past, including workhouses that would have had small infirmaries for the sick. That number does not include private nursing homes, which are generally not included on the historic-hospitals website (although I have slowly been adding ones that come to my attention). There are various reasons for their general exclusion, but mostly it is because they tended to occupy converted buildings, and the main focus of the historic-hospitals site is to explore the design of purpose-built hospitals.
Berwick Workhouse from the OS Town Plan published in 1852, reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland CC-BY (NLS). The early ordnance survey maps often include ground plans of public buildings, such as hospitals.
The large reduction in the number of hospitals now part of the National Health Service reflects the way in-patient care has developed, with patients spending less time in hospital and more procedures being done in out-patient clinics or day-care units. Plans for post-war reconstruction and the need for some form of national health service were addressed during the Second World War. A national survey of hospitals was commenced in 1942, that was published in 1946. It covered most hospitals but excluded those for mental illnesses or disabilities, and few private nursing homes. The survey, together with the recommendations made in the published reports, laid the foundations for the administrative organisation of the NHS.
The report on the hospitals in the North East of England did not paint a rosy picture. The general acute hospitals were mostly found to be out-of-date, too small, and on sites that did not allow for expansion. Out-patient departments were particularly poor, inconvenient and cramped. Even then it was recognised that the demands on out-patient departments had steadily increased in step with medical progress, and would continue to do so ‘departments that were once regarded with pride are now recognised as hopelessly inadequate’. The rise in specialisms was also impacting on the problem, as new clinics had to somehow be shoe-horned into existing buildings. In those days there were no appointment systems in place, which only added to the difficulties. The survey recognised that some improvements had been made before the war, but many more plans had been set aside in 1939.
Marshall Meadows, near Berwick upon Tweed, now a country house hotel, was a hospital between 1939 and 1958. Photographed by Rod Allday in 2009, from Geograph
About 23 hospitals in the county of Northumberland were transferred to the NHS in 1948. These were nine cottage hospitals, three of the five former workhouses in the county, five out of the eight infectious diseases hospitals, three sanatoria (for tuberculosis), two smallpox hospitals, and one maternity hospital. They fell within the administrative area of the Newcastle Regional Hospital Board, a huge area that stretched across to Cumbria and down to Sunderland, Teeside, County Durham and parts of North Yorkshire. Day-to-day administration was carried out by 33 Hospital Management Committees. This remained the case until the 1974 reorganisation of the NHS which saw the introduction of smaller area health authorities. In the early 1990s most of the hospitals transferred in 1948 were still either in use or at least still standing. Many have been demolished relatively recently. Only Berwick and Alnwick Infirmaries continue in some of their original buildings to this day.
I’m starting this week’s post with a few pictures by our new best friend Bill Figg who sometimes strayed as far north as the Fulham Road Although this view is about 25 years years old I still remember St Stephen’s Hospital pretty well. I went there several times, including one memorable occasion not […]
In January 1993 Robert Taylor wrote the tenth in his series of newsletters for the RCHME Hospitals Project team. The text below is primarily his, I have just updated the information in places and added the illustrations. At least two of the hospitals that he and Kathryn Morrison visited back then – Highfield Hospital, Droitwich and the Corbett Hospital, Stourbridge – have since been demolished. The ‘letter from Dorset’ is an account of the fieldwork undertaken in the county, further research was then carried out and reports of the sites written. These reports are deposited at Historic England’s Archives in Swindon. A list of the sites and their site record numbers is appended to the post, and I have added a brief note on their current status if they are no longer in use as a hospital or have been demolished.
Cruciform Observation Wards
During discussions with the Local Government Board in 1908-9 over the design for a new observation ward for the Croydon R.D.C. hospital, Christopher Chart of the firm of E. J. Chart of Croydon, came up with the idea of a cruciform block. His aim was to avoid structural problems met with in the design preferred by the L.G.B., with back-to-back wards, as well as to extend to hospitals the same principles that led to the prohibition of back-to-back houses. The resulting design was accepted, and the ward opened in 1911. It had a central octagonal duty room, and four arms each with three cubicles separated by plate-glass partitions and entered separately from external verandahs. The verandahs are against the East and West sides of the arms.
The Beddington Corner Hospital, near Croydon (later Wandle Valley Hospital). Plan of cruciform cubicle isolation block designed by Christopher Chart
Extract from the OS map surveyed in 1953-4, the left-hand cruciform block was the one built in 1911, that to the right added later. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Detail of the map above. The walls of the cubicles are shown, and the glass-roofed verandahs indicated by the cross-hatching. The entire hospital has been demolished and the site redeveloped for housing.
In 1913 Cambridge Borough Council inspected a number of isolation hospitals before enlarging their hospitals, and decided to adopt a cruciform observation block like that at Croydon. Perhaps this is why they employed the same architect. The Cambridge ward was begun in 1914 and opened in 1915. Like the Croydon hospital, it had three cubicles in each arm, and the verandahs faced East and West. Several improvements were introduced. In the angle of the arms is a small sanitary block, entered only from the verandah.
How many cruciform wards were designed by Chart is not known, but his firm was described in The Hospital of 29 May 1915, pp 179-80, as having ‘specialised in this design of isolation hospitals’.
Portsmouth Isolation Hospital. Extract from the OS 25-inch map, revised in 1937-8. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
At Portsmouth two cruciform wards were built, one shortly before 1922 and the other probably completed in 1938. They have longer arms than the early wards, and the design is perhaps improved by having the verandahs on the south sides of the arms, and the sanitary blocks at the outer ends where they do not obscure the light.
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS Map revised in 1896, showing the location of the isolation hospital over the road from the union workhouse. Kingston Prison and Cemetery were to the north-west. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
References: C. Chart, ‘Observation Wards in Isolation hospitals’ in The Hospital, 26 June 1915, pp 277-9: H. F. Parsons, ‘Report on Isolation Hospitals, Supplement to the Annual Report of the Medical Officer of the Local Government Board’ PP, 1912-13, XXXVI, pp 76-7.
Droitwich
Highfield Hospital, Droitwich was founded by the Birmingham Hospital Saturday Fund as a convalescent home in 1917 (see Best of Healthfor more information on the Birmingham Hospital Saturday Fund, and for an old postcard showing Highfield Hospital see robmcrorie’s flickr page). Following the construction of the new Worcestershire Royal Hospital (a PFI hospital which opened in 2002), Highfield closed and has since been demolished.
Extract from the 6-inch OS Map, revised in 1902. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
In the early 1990s, a visit to the Highfield Hospital at Droitwich revealed some unexpected benefits enjoyed by the patients. The hospital then specialised in ‘rheumatic and locomotor disorders’ and patients who were used to hobbling around at home as best they could, had their movements more strictly controlled on the wards. Coded messages above the beds informed staff of the restrictions to be placed on the patients’ mobility: CTB = confined to bed; WTT = walk to toilet. Under these conditions the nurse who provided a messenger service between the wards and the local betting shop was doubtless maintaining a necessary service. Those patients who were mobile were allowed to walk in the meadow behind the hospital. One of the amenities of this field was the back door to a nearby public house.
Corbett Hospital
The original Corbett hospital in Stourbridge stood on top of a hill with a magnificent view that included the glass works and before it was turned into a hospital it had been the home of the glass manufacturer, George Mills. Mills, who suffered from mental illness, committed suicide in November 1885, and his house (The Hill) was acquired by John Corbett, a salt producer. Corbett converted the house into a hospital, which opened in 1893.
Nearly a hundred years later, it was still functioning. At that time there was a cardiac recovery ward on the first floor of the main pavilion of the grand rebuilding scheme of 1931. The ground floor had been designed as the entrance to the hospital but had been put to other uses. Above the entrance porch was a sun room, then a ward, and the usual service section with bathroom and toilets, duty room, private ward and so on. The entrance had been moved to an insignificant position in the main corridor, and was difficult to find. The ironwork of the staircase was pleasant, but it was the ward itself that proved to be a surprise. Instead of the usual Nightingale-style room with windows on either side, a cross-wall divided the space into two, with the sixteen beds in the ward arranged parallel to the outside walls. This was the original arrangements, not a response to the high incidence of cardiac trouble in Stourbridge. It was an up-to-date arrangement at the time, though not one that Miss Nightingale would have approved of, nor would she have liked the small cubic space per patient, the result of low ceilings, or the bustle of a busy ward with much coming and going, and doctors on continuous duty. The sun room at the end of the ward was the only quiet place, as the patients weren’t well enough to be able to use it – and once they were well enough to do so, they were discharged.
The hospital was demolished in 2007, having been replaced in 2005 by a new building erected in the grounds. There are photographs and a full history of the site on the Amblecote History Society website.
A letter from Dorset, January 1993
Dorset proved an attractive but disappointing county. The landscape was on a larger scale than expected, and the hospitals on a smaller scale than anticipated. Poole and Bournemouth provided an urban contrast to this rural county, but their major hospitals had been demolished or were being demolished at the time of our visit.
Extract from Bartholomew’s half-inch maps of England and Wales, published in 1902, showing Poole harbour and Bournemouth. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Workhouses here in the 1830s did not have any physically separate infirmaries as did those further West, but had the infirm in the main building. Only at Poole did a separate infirmary seem to have been added, and that was all that remained of the workhouse. Wareham was the only workhouse where we know that an isolation block was built, and at Weymouth the V. D. block was the only building to have been demolished in what looked through the scaffolding like a very thorough remodelling. Perhaps the only pleasure came at Cerne where we saw the giant lying deep in the shadows of this grassy hillside.
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map, surveyed in 1886 showing Poole Union Workhouse. The infirmary was added to the north in 1903 (see also workhouses.org). Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
As usual isolation hospitals were elusive, except at Poole. Weymouth had a large iron hospital of 1902 that had unfortunately been reclad in 1984, and the holiday camp at the same town was almost as bad. In its days as a hospital it had belonged to the Port Sanitary Authority but the wards had been given an extra storey with cantilevered balconies to house the holidaymakers, who had to try and sleep above the pool tables and other delights installed in the wards below.
Weymouth isolation hospital, extract from the 2nd-edition OS map revised 1926-7. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
We managed to get the car completely covered in mud looking for the Sherborne hospitals, but sadly a farmer had beaten us to it and converted the site into a yard for vehicles that managed like us to get through the mud. The architects of the general hospitals appear to have been unusually keen to disguise their buildings and hide any wards. A classic pavilion hospital at Bournemouth was destroyed with a ball and chain as we watched, although another at the Naval Hospital at Portland survived our gaze. In contrast the county hospital at Dorchester was heavily disguised as a Jacobean country house, and its counterpart at Weymouth was taller and almost as inscrutable. Only a huge inscription told us what the building was.
Most of the cottage hospitals were so small that it seemed that the architects did not bother to make them look like anything at all. By contrast the Yeatman Hospital at Sherborne was a magnificent exercise in Gothic, and the Westminster Hospital at Shaftesbury was fairly good, but neither looked much like a hospital to start with, and both were smothered in modern additions. Bridport had a pretty little hospital that looked like a hospital, was cottagey in scale, and ought to have been listed; it was a rare ray of sunlight. (The hospital has since been demolished, a housing development stands on the site, and a new community hospital has been built on the north side of Bridport.)
The Royal Naval Hospital for infectious diseases, and the sick quarters, at Castletown, on the north side of Portland. Extract from the 2nd-edition OS Map, revised in 1901. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The Sick Quarters can be seen still under construction in the OS map surveyed in 1889. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map revised in 1926-7. The sick quarters were extended and developed into a general hospital, the Royal Navy left in 1957 and it became an NHS hospital, and remains a part of the present Portland Community Hospital. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
To the east of the isolation hospital and sick quarters was an earlier naval hospital, by Balaclava Bay. It had been demolished by the 1920s. Extract from the 2nd-edition OS Map, revised in 1901. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Portland Naval Base gave us a first that we did not really appreciate at the time, an underground hospital. The presence of some subterranean installation was obvious from the clutch of old concrete vents and single small access ramp, but it was not apparently very large, and seemed to be something like an air-raid shelter serving the above-ground hospital. Drawings at Acton showed that it was in fact a small hospital, attached to the main institution. (There was an out-store for the National Monuments Record at Acton, these plans should now be at Historic England’s archives at Swindon. The plans may have been part of the Common Services Agency collection. For photographs and more information on the underground hospital see the urbanexplorer.)
Bournemouth was full of convalescent homes, and the problems of identification and investigation finally defeated us’ most were hardly worth chasing, and the difficulty of distinguishing between purpose-built and converted buildings made the exercise unfruitful. St Anne’s was the exception, a great curve overlooking the sea and designed by Weir Schultz for convalescing lunatics. (This was the seaside branch of the Holloway Sanatorium, built in 1909-12)
Dorset County Asylum, later Herrison Hospital, now converted into private housing, named Charlton Down. Extract from the 2nd-edition OS Map revised 1900-1. The private wing (Herrison House) was built to the north-west of the main range, and the western half of the complex above was built first. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The Dorset lunatics were first cared for at a house at Forston given to the county in the 18th century; it was in the bottom of a narrow valley, the sort of site that was never used for asylums or hospitals. In the middle of the 19th century a more conventional hilltop site not far way was bought, and the new asylum went through most of the usual processes of enlargement. This included about 1900 a large and separate block for paying patients. Although we did not get inside because it had since changed function, the entrance hall and the exterior appearance declared that this was not for the common or pauper madman, but for someone with more refined taste. The exterior was an elaborate riot of terracotta ornament, rather like Digby’s at Exeter, but here there were no workshops or laundries for toiling patients, and the whole resembled a country house set in its gardens.
Hospital sites recorded as part of the RCHME Hospitals Survey, with grid references and the National Buildings Record number. The files for these sites can be seen at Historic England Archives, Kemble Drive Swindon. See also Dorset
DORSET
ALLINGTON Bridport Isolation Hospital In the 1960s this was North Allington Hospital for chest diseases. It has been demolished and a new community hospital built on the site SY 456 939: 100478
BLANDFORD FORUM Blandford Community Hospital (Blandford Cottage Hospital) ST 884 069: 100466
BOURNEMOUTH Herbert Hospital (Herbert Memorial Convalescent Home) SZ 065 903: 100452 Kings Park Community Hospital (Bournemouth Sanitary Hospital; Bournemouth Municipal Hospital) SZ 118 924: 100403 Royal National Hospital (Royal National Sanatorium for Consumption) Now a gated complex, providing ‘assisted living’ accommodation, or retirement apartments. SZ 083 914: 100243 Royal Victoria and West Hampshire Hospital, Shelley Road Branch (Boscombe Hospital; Royal Boscombe and West Hampshire Hospital) Demolished SZ 111 923: 100401 Royal Victoria and West Hampshire Hospital, Victoria Branch (Royal Victoria Hospital) Converted into flats – Royal Victoria Apartments, tile panels moved to the new Royal Bournemouth Hospital SZ 076 915: 100402
BRIDPORT Bridport General Hospital demolished SY 459 932: 100419 Port Bredy Hospital (Bridport Union Workhouse) Converted into housing SY 469 931: 100477
CHARMINSTER Herrison Hospital (Dorset County Asylum) Converted into housing SY 678 947: 100244
CHRISTCHURCH Christchurch Hospital (Christchurch Union Workhouse Infirmary) The workhouse was latterly known as Fairmile Hospital The infirmary partly survives but the former workhouse buildings have been demolished. SZ 148 939: 100461
CORFE CASTLE Wareham Council Smallpox Hospital Converted into housing SY 941 843: 100670
DORCHESTER Damers Hospital (Dorchester Union Workhouse) Original workhouse largely demolished, new district hospital built on land to the north in the 1970s-80s SY 687 903: 100475 Dorchester Isolation Hospital demolished, Winterbourne Hospital built on site in the 1980s-90s SY 689 891: 100418 Dorset County Hospital converted into flats SY 691 906: 100417 Royal Horse Artillery Barracks Hospital This may actually still be standing – or was in 2014, now within a trading estate SY 686 909: 100476
LYME REGIS Lyme Regis Hospital Seemingly a nursing home in 2015 SY 336 921: 100422
POOLE Alderney Hospital (Poole BC Isolation Hospital; Alderney Isolation Hospital) Most of the original ward blocks have been demolished SZ 042 943: 100465 Poole General Hospital (Cornelia Hospital; Cornelia and East Dorset Hospital) rebuilt in the 1960s-70s SZ 020 913: 100464 Poole Hospital (Poole Union Workhouse) rebuilt as the Harbour Hospital, the former workhouse infirmary incorporated into St Mary’s Maternity Hospital SZ 018 914: 100404 St Anne’s Hospital (St Anne’s Sanatorium) SZ 052 888: 100463
PORTLAND Portland Hospital (Royal Naval Hospital) SY 685 741: 100481
SHAFTESBURY Westminster Memorial Hospital (Westminster Memorial and Cottage Hospital) ST 860 228: 100487
SHERBORNE Coldharbour Hospital demolished ST 643 176: 100066 Sherborne Isolation Hospital demolished ST 622 173: 100425 Sherborne School Sanatorium extended ST 635 166: 100424 Yeatman Memorial Hospital (Yeatman Hospital) extended ST 636 167: 100483
ST LEONARD’S AND ST IVES St Leonard’s Hospital (104th US General Hospital) largely demolished, just a few or the EMS huts were extant in 2015 SU 102 020: 100468
STURMINSTER NEWTON Sturminster Union Workhouse partly demolished – the front range survives with new buildings to the rear, used as a day centre and a centre for adults with learning disabilities ST 787 148: 100426
SWANAGE Dorset Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital extended and converted into private housing SZ 033 782: 100467 Swanage Cottage Hospital SZ 028 784: 100406
WAREHAM TOWN Christmas Close Hospital (Wareham and Purbeck Union Workhouse) some of the ancillary buildings have been demolished, and it has been converted into housing – Robert Christmas House – with the hospital moved into the c.1960s block adjacent SY 918 874: 100407
WEYMOUTH Portway Hospital (Weymouth Union Workhouse) converted into housing, some parts demolished SY 675 785: 100479 Westhaven Hospital (Weymouth Corporation Isolation Hospital) seems to have been completely rebuilt in about the 1980s SY 660 795: 100421 Weymouth and District Hospital (Princess Christian Hospital and Sanatorium) original buildings demolished, hospital largely redeveloped in about the 1960s SY 682 803: 100480 Weymouth and Dorset County Royal Eye Infirmary now a hospice SY 683 803: 100423 Weymouth Port Sanitary Authority Hospital the wards still extant in the midst of Chesil Beach Holiday Park SY 666 762: 100420
WIMBOURNE MINSTER Victoria Hospital (Victoria Cottage Hospital) numerous additions and alterations, but still in use SU 004 002: 100405
August 1992 saw the production of newsletter number five from the RCHME Cambridge office. There are snippets here about sanitary facilities – water closets and baths – and and more on temporary buildings. There are also useful indexes to information in the Parliamentary Papers, with reports on English provincial workhouse infirmaries by Edward Smith from 1867, and the enormously useful survey of hospitals in the United Kingdom carried out by Bristowe and Holmes in 1863.
Hereford Workhouse
In 1866 an inspector from the Poor Law Board visited the Hereford Union Workhouse in order to report on the infirmary. He found that the building was being greatly enlarged, and that two new wards were being built over the dining room. There was only one water closet on each side of the main building, at first floor level, but there were some other water closets in the yards that contained water aden were flushed twice or three times a week. The dry wording leaves one in doubt about the presence of water in the closets on the first floor. The rest hardly bears thinking about.
The previous insalubrious snippet came from the Report (to the Poor Law Board) of Dr Edward Smith, 15 April 1867, on 48 Provincial Workhouse Infirmaries. It is published in Parliamentary Papers 1867-8 LX, pp 325 onwards. In these reports Dr Smith examined critically the provision for the sick, and gave a table for each workhouse examined, listing for each ward the dimensions, position of windows, number of beds and fireplaces, and present function. The only plan published is a block plan of Birmingham workhouse. {This was being demolished at the time the newsletter was written, in the summer of 1992.} One of the things that emerges from this report is that by 1866 rooms in workhouses were often used in a very different way from what was originally intended. Using the pagination of the original report rather than the imposed pagination of volume LX, the 48 workhouses are as follows:
The Portsea Island Union Workhouse Infirmary at Portsmouth was built in 1842 and extended in 1860 by an additional storey. {This later became St Mary’s General Hospital} Unfortunately we did not manage to get inside this derelict building, but we do know something of its internal arrangement. The wards on all three floors were on the South side of the range, and there was a corridor along the North side. The wards had windows on the external wall and also into the corridor (part of alterations of 1860), thereby providing cross-ventilation of an indirect kind; the corridor also had windows on the external wall. The internal windows had shutters, but we are not sure of the details. The Poor Law Board inspector in 1866 was not over-critical of this arrangement, for cross-ventilaiton was still a new hobby-horse for hospital reformers. A comparable arrangement of parallel wards with a common wall pierced by windows appears at the London Fever Hospital of 1848 and in the new Halford Wing of the Devon and Exeter Hospital built in 1854.
The acceptability of this internal ventilation provides a background to the roughly contemporary alterations at the Military Hospital at Devonport. This hospital was built as a series of pavilions in 1797, each floor of each pavilion consisting of two wards side by side separated by a corridor containing a staircase. The hospital was criticised in the 1861 report on military hospitals, and was subsequently altered. The stairs were removed and windows inserted in the walls between the corridor and the wards. Presumably there are a few other hospitals with wards ventilated through corridors, but they are unlikely to date from after the 1860s.
Bristowe & Holmes
Appendix 15 of the 6th Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council for 1863 is titled Report by Dr John Syer Bristowe and Mr Timothy Holmes on the Hospitals of the United Kingdom. This report records the reactions of the authors to visits paid by one or both of them to what they believed to be all of the major hospitals in the Kingdom; it has a supplement of brief critical descriptions of 81 hospitals in England, and some sort of plan is published for 25 of them. The Report is Parliamentary Papers 1864 vol. XXVIII; Bristowe and Holmes’ appendix begins on p.467 as renumbered for the Blue Books (463 of the original pagination), and the supplement begins on p.575 (571 original pagination). The following list uses the titles for the descriptions of the hospitals, and the amended pagination. English hospitals were divided into metropolitan, provincial and rural; Scotland and Ireland were dealt with on pages 692 to 726.
ENGLAND Metropolitan Hospitals 575 St Bartholomew’s Hospital, plan of block C 577 The Charing Cross Hospital, plan of front range 579 St George’s Hospital, plan of 1st floor 582 Guy’s Hospital 585 King’s College Hospital, plan of 1st floor 589 London Hospital 591 St Mary’s Hospital, plan of ground floor 594 Middlesex Hospital 596 St Thomas’s Hospital, plans of North Wing and first floor 599 University College Hospital 600 Westminster Hospital, plan of second floor 602 Royal Free Hospital
English Provincial Hospitals 605 Birmingham General Hospital 607 Birmingham Queen’s Hospital 608 Bristol General Hospital, plan of second floor 610 Bristol Royal Infirmary, plan of 1st floor 611 Hull General Infirmary 613 Leeds General Infirmary, plan of G floor 616 Liverpool Southern Hospital 619 Liverpool Northern Hospital 621 Manchester Royal Infirmary, plan of 1st floor 623 Newcastle Royal Infirmary 624 Sheffield Infirmary, plan of attic storey
English Rural Hospitals 626 Barnstaple Infirmary 626 Bath United Hospital 628 Bedford Infirmary 629 Bradford Infirmary 630 Sussex County Hospital {Brighton} 632 Suffolk General Hospital at Bury St Edmunds, plan of ground floor of old hospital and new hospital 634 Addenbrooke’s Hospital at Cambridge, plan of ground floor 636 Kent and Canterbury Hospital, plan of ground floor 638 Cumberland Infirmary, Carlisle, plan of ground floor 640 St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Chatham, outline plan of ward 641 Cheltenham Hospital 642 Chester Infirmary 643 Chichester Infirmary 644 Essex and Colchester General Hospital 646 Derbyshire General Infirmary, plan of attic {first} floor, fever house 648 Devonport Hospital {Royal Albert} 649 Dover Hospital 649 Devon and Exeter Hospital 652 Gloucester Infirmary 653 Hereford Infirmary 655 Huddersfield Infirmary 656 Ipswich and East Suffolk Hospital 657 Lancaster House of Recovery 659 Leicester Infirmary and Fever House, plan of ground floor 661 Lincoln Hospital 662 West Kent General Hospital, Maidstone 663 Northampton Hospital 664 Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, ground floor plan 667 Nottingham General Hospital 669 Radcliffe Infirmary at Oxford, plan of ground floor 672 South Devon Hospital, Plymouth 674 Royal Portsmouth, Portsea and Gosport Hospital 675 Berkshire County Hospital at Reading, plan of 1st floor 677 Salisbury Infirmary 678 Salop Infirmary 680 Royal South Hants Infirmary, Southampton 681 Stafford General Infirmary 682 Taunton and Somerset Hospital 684 Whitehaven Hospital 685 Hants County Hospital, Winchester, plan of ground floor 688 South Staffordshire General Hospital, Wolverhampton 689 Worcester Infirmary, plan of ground floor 691 York County Hospital
Special Hospitals 726 Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street 728 Dreadnought Hospital Ship 729 Haslar hospital, block plan 731 Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley 731 Hospital for consumption and Diseases of the Chest {Brompton} 732 London Fever Hospital, plan of ground floor 737 Newcastle Fever Hospital 737 Small Pox Hospital {Highgate Hill} 739 York Road Lying-in Hospital {London} 740 Liverpool Lying-in Hospital 740 Margate Sea-Bathing Infirmary 741 Southport Convalescent Hospital
More Baths
The Hospitals Investigator No.4 drew attention to how many lunatics it was possible to get into one change of bath water. It now emerges that lunatics were not the only victims of this economy. At the Royal Berkshire Hospital at Reading in 1870 they managed to wash, if that is the correct word, at least eight patients in one change of water. The full number is not known, because it was only the eighth patient who complained. The reason appears to be that it took ten minutes to fill the bath and another ten minutes to empty it again, and the hospital porter did not have time to do this.
Several firms are now known to have provided wood and iron hospital buildings, especially in the early years of he twentieth century, although their hospitals and chalets are hard to find or identify. So far the list includes the following:
Humphrey’s of Knightsbridge, (a catalogue of 1900 was located by the York office team). Several of their hospitals survive. Boulton and Paul of Norwich, who were still in business (in 1992) selling garden shelters that are almost indistinguishable from sanatorium chalets. Early chalets have been found as far away as Plymouth. {The company was taken over in 1997} Portable Building Company of Manchester, who provided a sanatorium for the Nottingham Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis in about 1900. Hygienic Constructions and Portable Buildings Ltd. who supplied the Homerton College Sanatorium in 1913. This weatherboarded building still (1992) stands. Wire Wove Roofing Company of London made tuberculosis chalets. G. W. Beattie of Putney advertised their New Venetian Shelter, for tuberculous patients, in 1913. Kenman and Sons of Dublin, who sold tuberculosis chalets in 1913.
Not a hospital, but a temporary building that reflected the popularity of open-air living, this is taken from the rather wonderful Broadland memories blog
