OUTPATIENTS HALL (TO REAR OF NOS 45-51, OUT PATIENTS DEPARTMENT OF ROYAL NATIONAL ORTHOPAEDIC HOSPITAL)

OUTPATIENTS HALL (TO REAR OF NOS 45-51, OUT PATIENTS DEPARTMENT OF ROYAL NATIONAL ORTHOPAEDIC HOSPITAL), BOLSOVER STREET W1

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1378462
Date first listed:: 02-Oct-1998
List Entry Name:: OUTPATIENTS HALL (TO REAR OF NOS 45-51, OUT PATIENTS DEPARTMENT OF ROYAL NATIONAL ORTHOPAEDIC HOSPITAL)
Statutory Address:: OUTPATIENTS HALL (TO REAR OF NOS 45-51, OUT PATIENTS DEPARTMENT OF ROYAL NATIONAL ORTHOPAEDIC HOSPITAL), BOLSOVER STREET W1

The Missing Pieces Project

Share your view of unique places.

Add your contribution

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

There is a problem

Use of this mapping is subject to terms and conditions.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Images of England Project

To view this image please use Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or Edge.

Archive image, may not represent current condition of site.

Date:: 2006-05-30
Reference:: IOE01/15643/05
Rights:: © Mr Anthony Rau. Source: Historic England Archive

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1378462
Date first listed:: 02-Oct-1998
List Entry Name:: OUTPATIENTS HALL (TO REAR OF NOS 45-51, OUT PATIENTS DEPARTMENT OF ROYAL NATIONAL ORTHOPAEDIC HOSPITAL)
Statutory Address 1:: OUTPATIENTS HALL (TO REAR OF NOS 45-51, OUT PATIENTS DEPARTMENT OF ROYAL NATIONAL ORTHOPAEDIC HOSPITAL), BOLSOVER STREET W1

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

Location

Statutory Address:: OUTPATIENTS HALL (TO REAR OF NOS 45-51, OUT PATIENTS DEPARTMENT OF ROYAL NATIONAL ORTHOPAEDIC HOSPITAL), BOLSOVER STREET W1

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County:: Greater London Authority
District:: City of Westminster (London Borough)
Parish:: Non Civil Parish
National Grid Reference:: TQ 28932 82128

Details

TQ 2882 SE BOLSOVER STREET W1 (East side) 1900/36/10182 Out-Patients' Hall (to rear of Nos. 45-51, Out Patients' Department Of Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital)

II

Waiting hall to outpatients' department of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. Built 1927 to the design of HF Murrell and RM Pigott, with contemporary painted panels in oil on canvas by Nan West. Built in grey brick. Roman Classical style.

PLAN: Rectangular 5-bay building with flat roof, comprising long, full-height waiting room rising above lower, one-storey range of top-lit consulting rooms around E and W sides and operating theatre on N side, each accessed directly from hall.

Interior has vaulted and coffered ceiling, lit by clerestorey of metal-framed Diocletian windows with pale coloured glass, set in lunettes. Triple-light window to E end. Original pendant lights from ceiling. Pilasters between bays, pair of Tuscan columns to W, tiled floor. Entrances to consulting rooms set within each bay; that to first bay blocked, with broad, shallow-moulded architraves; some retain original veneered flush panelled double doors with porthole windows. Mural decoration of oil on canvas covers approximately 90 square metres. The principal subject matter is the months and seasons of the year, extending along entire length of N and S walls. The end (E) wall has the largest individual scene of figures picnicking in a landscape setting representing the theme of "Summer". The other scenes are set within the bays between pilasters and above and to the sides of doorways. Upper areas of bays and below the windows have narrower rectangular panels displaying painted swags and floral decorative motifs. The style is influenced by French Post-Impressionism. The consulting rooms have been altered internally.

HISTORY: Built in 1927 as the waiting hall to the new outpatients' department of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. It superseded an outpatients' department located in a block of 1908 immediately to the north. The original main RNOH building of 1907 in Great Portland Street ceased use in 1984. Katherine Anne ('Nan') West RA (b 1904) painter, decorator and illuminator, was the daughter of Henry West, Chairman of the Trustees of the RNOH. She trained at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks, who advocated 'a vigorous defence of the traditional spirit in art' and encouraged art students to paint murals in public buildings, thus restoring a social function for art. West's career flourished 1922-37, during which time she assisted Rex Whistler in the decoration of the Tate Gallery restaurant and produced a smaller Noah's Ark scene at the Child Welfare Clinic, Chelsea. Her murals for Simpson's Tea Rooms in Piccadilly do not survive.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: Of special interest as a hospital waiting room with an intact mural painted scheme. This is one of the largest mural cycles of the time to survive in London and is an important example of Tonks's policy to promote art in public spaces. The austere classicism of the architecture provides an elegant framework for Nan West's informal painted scheme; the whole being an elegant and well-conceived composition. The murals have great rarity within a type which was never numerous and especially vulnerable to change. They also are an important example of a tradition of female mural artists working in the inter-war years whose work is highly regarded, such as Mary Adshead, Daphne Baring, Evelyn Dunbar, Mildred Edridge and Violet Martin. Other inter-war murals survive at the Tate Gallery restaurant of 1926, Morley College, Lambeth of 1929 by Edward Bawden, Eric Ravilious and Charles Mahoney (some destroyed by bomb damage), the village hall at Wood Green, Hampshire by Robert Baker and Edward Payne, Wimbledon Library and Brockley School between 1933 and 1936 by Charles Mahoney, Evelyn Dunbar, Mildred Eldridge and Violet Martin.

SOURCES Country Life" 10 December 1927 p881, "Recent Mural Paintings" The Builder" 2 December 2 1927,pp 849, 855, 857

Listing NGR: TQ2893482110

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:: 470763
Legacy System:: LBS

Sources

Books and journals
'The Building' in 2 December, (1927), 857
'Country Life' in 10 December, (1927), 881

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.