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Summary

Description

Thomson and Sandilands, 1900'04. Symmetrical, 2-storey, 11-bay Beaux Arts administration building with central columned porch in advanced broken-pedimented bay. Advanced end bays with canted bay windows. Red brick with some ashlar margins. Round-arched, key-stoned entrance and carved decorative panel to pediment. Grey slates and red ridge tiles. The windows are predominantly 6-pane over plate glass in timber sash and case.

The interior was partially seen in 2013 and has an open-well stair with metal balusters and timber balustrade and newel posts. There is some decorative cornicing to the corridors and rooms. There are a number of decorative timber fire surrounds.

Statement of Special Interest

The Administration Building at Stobhill hospital was built between 1900 and 1904 and is a key building within this rare surviving Poor Law complex. Designed by the successful Glasgow architects' firm of Thomson and Sandilands, it has a number of distinctive decorative architectural features of high quality. The Beaux Arts arrangement, with the columned porch, decorative panels and columned niches of the building are classical features that distinguish the building stylistically from the more simply designed wards in the complex. Internally, the building has retained good decorative detailing, which is an unusual survival in a building that forms part of a working hospital site.

The building is situated facing the original entrance to the complex and it would have been one of the first buildings to have been seen on site. It is situated at the centre of the site, close to other ancillary buildings, including the listed water tower and former medical superintendent's house.

Stobhill Hospital was built as a Poor Law hospital in 1900-04 and is one of only a handful of remaining large complexes built specifically to care for the poor. As such, it gives some insight into the provision of care given to people who could not afford medical care and who often had associated psychiatric problems. It accommodated young children, older married couples and the poor with medical or psychiatric disorders. Two other smaller poorhouses were built in Glasgow at the same time, but these no longer survive. When built, the site was composed of a number of wards and associated buildings, some of which have either been demolished or altered so significantly that their integrity has been lost.

The hospital was requisitioned by the military during the First World War, when the patients were sent to other hospitals. After 1948, it became part of the NHS. New buildings were built on the site in the latter part of the 20th century and the site continues as a hospital.

Provision to care for the poor in Scotland has varied over the centuries and in the 18th and early 19th century it largely fell to churches to provide some sort of care in their parishes. This could vary tremendously from parish to parish and was often monetary and did not involve providing accommodation. After the Poor Law (Scotland) Act in 1845 was passed, a Supervisory Board was set up in Edinburgh which oversaw relief throughout the country. A model plan was drawn up for poorhouses and many smaller ones were built between the period of 1849 and 1870 following this plan. In the larger towns and cities, more provision was required and bigger complexes were built. These were often overcrowded and by the end of the 19th century, there was increasing concern that medical care for the poor should be provided in one institution and there should be separate wards to accommodate this. Of the large institutions built during the latter part of the 19th and early 20th century only five survive in 2014.

The architectural practice of John Thomson and Robert Douglas Sandilands ran from 1886-1914. Based in Glasgow, it was very a successful practice, which gained most of its work from competition designs, although it also had some private clients. Its works include the Beaux Arts style Govan Town Hall, Gartloch Asylum and the former offices and shops of the Glasgow City Improvement Trust at the Trongate in Glasgow.

Previous statutory address, '133 Balornock Road, Stobhill Hospital'.

Statutory address and listed building record updated, 2014.

References

Bibliography

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