Details
798-1/0/10224 EUSTON ROAD
12-SEP-03 Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital
GV II
ELIZABETH GARRETT ANDERSON HOSPITAL
Hospital for Women. 1889-90 by J.M. Brydon. Stock brick with red brick dressings in the Queen Anne style, timber cupola, tiled roof.
PLAN: rectangular front block parallel with the Euston Road, linked to administrative block along Churchway. Later additions to north and east of lesser interest.
EXTERIOR: Frontage block on Euston Road: three storeys and attic. Four-bay front with entrance to left, with projecting porch of red brick, with a moulded arched opening flanked by blocked pilasters. Central chimney stack (truncated), with a cut brick cartouche within a pedimented aedicular surround, reading FOUNDED 1866, at 2nd floor level, alongside a long framed inscription panel. Rusticated quoins of red brick. Segmental-arched windows, originally 6/6-pane sashes (now replaced with UPVC copies), with keystones over centre. Modillion cornice in brick. Mansard roof with a pair of windows within a brick surround abutting the chimney stack; lesser dormers to either side. To right, beyond a recessed link, is a single bay tower of three storeys, the former topped with a weatherboarded superstructure supporting an ogee roof: the ground floor is open, with an altered (formerly arched) opening; the first floor has a segmental-arched window, the second a 6/6-pane sash window within a rusticated, pediment-topped surround, and the third has a round window within a rusticated surround, flanked by pilasters. The west-facing return elevation of the frontage block has a two-storey canted bay to ground and first floors, with a segmental pediment enriched with cut brick decoration at the top. At second floor level is a Venetian window, set within a depressed relieving arch. Three small windows within the gable end.
EXTERIOR: former administrative block on Churchway: linked to frontage block with arched, infilled, balconies. Three-bay front with central canted bay to centre. Paired windows to ground floor, tall, 9/9-pane sashes to first floor, 6/6-pane sashes to second. Modillion cornice. Attic storey with tall centrepiece, behind which was formerly a tall ornamental spirelet on an octagonal base. South-facing gable end with truncated chimney stacks, formerly linked with an arch.
INTERIOR: much altered. Some memorial plaques over former bed positions remain in situ.
HISTORY: this hospital was opened in 1890 as the New Hospital for Women, and was the first purpose-built hospital devoted to women doctors, treating female patients. The foundation stone had been laid by the Princess of Wales in 1889; Brydon exhibited drawings of the building at the 1890 RA. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917), had led the movement for women doctors, and had founded a hospital ward at her dispensary in Marylebone in 1874. The Euston Road hospital combined teaching hospital provision (it initially had 42 beds) with premises for the Women's Medical Institute, situated on the ground floor of the frontage block. The lay-out of the hospital was originally distinguished by a circular ward block at the north end, and by open connecting balconies between the blocks (subsequently in-filled), reflecting the direct involvement of Florence Nightingale and her nephew Sir Douglas Galton. The hospital subsequently expanded considerably, to north and east, in the 1920s, which replaced the circular ward block with a large rectangular block. Only the first generation buildings are included within this listing. Although somewhat altered externally and internally, they possess very considerable historic interest as the country's first proper hospital for women. The frontage block on Euston Road is of particular interest as it is architecturally the most impressive surviving part, and because it originally contained the Women's Medical Institute on the ground floor, with wards on the upper floors.
SOURCES: The Builder 5 April 1890, 5; Building News, 10 May 1890, 649-650; London Metropolitan Archives, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital papers (ref. H13/EGA); Deborah Cherry and Lynne Walker, 'Elizabeth Garrett Anderson: Image, identity and space in the modernization of 19th-century medicine', Visual Culture in Britain vol. 2 (2002).
