Farnham Road Hospital

Details

SU 94NE GUILDFORD FARNHAM ROAD (North Side)

3/48 Farnham Road Hospital (Formerly The Royal Surrey County Hospital)

GV II

Hospital. Foundation stone laid 3rd July 1863, opened 27th April 1866 with Neo- Georgian porch added in early C20. Designed by Edward Lower with advice from Florence Nightingale. Coursed sandstone blocks with brick dressings and angle quoins, plain tiled roofs, hipped over pavilions and lantern. Rectangular plan with extensions to rear, symmetrical front range around a central pavilion flanked by 5-bay wings with smaller pavilions projecting and further 3 bay wings to ends. Three storeys and attics in central pavilion, two storeys and attics in flanking wings and pavilions, basement storey in right hand end wing. Wooden lantern on lead-covered plinth to ridge of centre pavilion under swept pyramidal roof with bracketed eaves, gablets and crowned by scrolled-iron weathervane. Doric pilasters at angles flank two round-arched and keystoned openings on each face. Clock face in front face of supporting plinth. Plinth across elevation with diagonal brick dentil string course over ground floor, sill band across second floor and broad plat band to eaves. Three-bay central pavilion with 1 bay return walls. Glazing-bar sash fenestration. Three gauged-brick, segmentally-headed 12- pane windows on the second floor with keystones above and in brick surrounds, three similar, but taller, 18-pane windows below on the first floor. Two windows on the ground floor, one either side of a flat-roofed portico under a stone-coped brick panelled parapet, the centre panel of stone. Outer brick piers on pedestal plinths flank to thin Doric columns in antis with railings across between them. One bay links to wings set back either side of central pavilion, each with large gabled half-dormer over attic sash window and with keystoned segmental heads to single sashes on first and ground floors. Five bay wings either side set back again each with small louvred gablets in roofs. Tall 18-pane glazing-bar sash windows on the first floor under gauged-brick keystoned heads breaking up into eaves band, stone sills below breaking into sill band. Tripartite glazing-bar sash windows on ground floor alternating with single 12-pane,segmentally-headed sashes; one tripartite window blocked in right hand wing and one C20 casement added to right of centre. Projecting pavilions to ends of wings under steeply- pitched roofs with one brick-dressed glazed panel in each face under the eaves. Two tall and narrow 8-pane sash windows on the front of each pavilion on each floor, 1 similar window on each floor of return sides. Further 3-bay wings to ends, set back, with similar fenestration as main 5-bay wings although right hand end wing has basement storey and five windows on the ground floor. Single-storey flat-roofed extension to left end; C20 link building to rear at right angles connecting to parallel range across the rear with further C20 extensions stepping down to sides not of special interest. The original hospital building cost £17,000 and was dedicated to the memory of Prince Albert; Queen Victoria became a patron and donated 100 Guineas to the cost of construction.

MATTHEW ALEXANDER: GUILDFORD AS IT WAS (1978) PEVSNER : BUILDINGS OF ENGLAND, SURREY (1971) p.280.

Listing NGR: SU9892249386

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

288910

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Alexander, M, Guildford As It Was, (1978)
Pevsner, N, Nairn, I Rev. by Cherry, The Buildings of England: Surrey, (1971), 280

End of official list entry

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