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Summary

Description

MacGibbon and Ross, 1879, with later alterations and additions. 2-storey, basement and attic asymmetrical U-plan former maternity hospital with 17th century Scottish details. Squared and snecked sandstone (coursed rubble to sides and rear) with ashlar dressings. Finialed, slated, louvred lantern/ventilator to central ridge.

N (LAURISTON PLACE) ELEVATION: 8 bays: entrance in centre bay: steps to 2-leaf timber panelled door with plate glass fanlight, sidelights and arched panes over in heavy hoodmoulded semicircular-arched surround with blank panel over (see Notes); single window to 1st floor, shoulder-arched window in gabled dormerhead to attic with splayed chimney stalk. Stone-mullioned bipartite windows to basement, ground and 2nd floors in flanking bays; 3 small finialed, king-posted dormers to attic to each side. Slightly advanced gabled 2-bay outer blocks, regularly fenestrated (left block has stone-transomed windows with top-hoppers at ground and 1st floors, narrow window to gable), with gablehead chimney stacks. Square-section corner tower to outer right with ball-finialled, slated conical roof; moulded band at 2nd floor forming hoodmould to window.

W ELEVATION: tower to outer left: moulded band at 3rd and window at fourth floor levels. Advanced gabled bay to inner left, with bipartites to left, door to ground and high-transomed windows with top hoppers above; door with bracketed metal balcony to 4th floor. 3 central bays: stone-mullioned bipartites to basement, ground and 1st floors; gabled dormerheads breaking eaves to attic. Polygonal tower corbelled out at 3rd floor level to outer right; windows on each facet; slated, ball-finialled conical roof.

S (REAR) ELEVATION: U-plan; lower, piend-roofed angled blocks at S end of wings (see Notes). Single windows in all bays, alternately breaking eaves at attic level. Later doors at ground and advanced bays with stairs, lift shaft etc. Later timber covered bridge to No 1 Lauriston Park.

Windows to former wards with high level transomes and top hoppers above sash and case windows (see Notes). Grey slates. Stone skews; corniced wallhead, gablehead and ridge stacks (no visible cans).

BOUNDARY WALLS AND RAILINGS: cast-iron railings mounted on low ashlar-coped rubble wall to basement area.

Statement of Special Interest

After the death of Sir James Young Simpson in 1870 a large sum of money was subscribed by the public, enabling building of the first purpose-built maternity hospital in Edinburgh, to be known as the Simpson Memorial Maternity Hospital, to begin. The foundation stone was 'about to be laid' on 25th April 1874. MacGibbon and Ross's Dean of Guild plans do not show the asymmetrical tower on the NW corner. The blank panel above the door is shown in the Dean of Guild elevation with the date 1877. The piend-roofed blocks at the S ends of the U wings originally housed coal stores at ground and sculleries, baths, linen rooms etc at upper floors. Replaced in 1935 by the building at the Royal Infirmary site designed by Thomas W Turnbull, latterly this building was the Lothian College of Nursing and Midwifery.

References

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