Royal Naval Hospital, Stonehouse

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Coordinates: 50°22′20″N 4°09′29″W / 50.3722°N 4.1580°W / 50.3722; -4.1580
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Royal Naval Hospital, Stonehouse
Royal Naval Hospital, Stonehouse
Royal Naval Hospital, Stonehouse is located in Devon
Royal Naval Hospital, Stonehouse
Royal Naval Hospital, Stonehouse
Location within Devon
Coordinates50°22′20″N 4°09′29″W / 50.3722°N 4.1580°W / 50.3722; -4.1580
Site history
Built1758-1765
Built forWar Office
In use1765-1995

The Royal Naval Hospital, Stonehouse was a medical facility for naval officers and other ranks at

RNH Haslar, which had first received patients some seven years earlier).[3]

The hospital closed in 1995; it is now a gated residential complex called The Millfields.

listed buildings and structures.[5]

History

The main quadrangle (now flats).

The hospital was built between 1758 and 1765 to a design by the little-known Alexander Rovehead.[6] The design was influential in its time:[7] its pattern of detached wards (arranged so as to maximise ventilation and minimise spread of infection) foreshadows the 'pavilion' style of hospital building which was popularised by Florence Nightingale a century later.[8] The site for the hospital was formerly known as the mill fields (after the nearby tide mills on Stonehouse Creek).[9] Towards the end of the century, Stoke Military Hospital was built by the Army, facing the naval hospital directly across the creek.[10]

Description

An 18th-century engraving of 'His Majesty's New Royal Hospital Building, near Plymouth'.

The hospital housed 1,200 patients in sixty wards, its ten ward blocks being arranged around a courtyard with a central block containing the

victualling room, a smallpox ward and a lunatic ward).[3]

West of the main quadrangle, facing the central block with its cupola, Rovehead built a

Royal Marine detachment which provided a guard for the Hospital;[15] the Marines themselves were accommodated in a small barracks just outside the gate, similar in design to the nearby (and near-contemporary) Stonehouse Royal Marine Barracks.[16] Later, police took over guard duty, and the barracks became a police station.[3] A water tower on the edge of the site provided a pressured supply to the wards and to water closets around the site: an early example of a pressurised water sanitation system.[17]

In 1826 a burial ground was established on a parcel of land to the north-east of the hospital site, and a gate was opened in the boundary wall (by the water tower) to provide access; later a

mortuary chapel was built, just inside the gate.[9] A new hospital chapel was provided in 1883 with the dedication Church of the Good Shepherd, placed east of the main quadrangle on the main east-west axis.[18] At around the same time, the wash house on the northern edge of the site was expanded to serve as a laundry, with the addition of a sizeable boiler house alongside. A significant expansion of facilities within the site took place from 1898-1906, with the addition of a sick officers' quarters beyond the chapel, staff quarters alongside it, a row of four zymotic ward blocks just north-east of the main quadrangle and a new dispensary (along with a house for the chief pharmacist
) near the water gate.[9] All these were built using distinctive yellow brick, which contrasts with the Plymouth limestone of the earlier buildings on the site.[9]

References

  1. Navy List
    , various editions.
  2. ^ Evans, Graham (1994). Up The Creek: Royal Naval Hospital Stonehouse. Liskeard, Cornwall: G. V. Evans.
  3. ^ a b c d e Coad, Jonathan (2013). Support for the Fleet. Swindon: English Heritage. pp. 363–366.
  4. ^ "Introduction". Millfields. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  5. ^ Historic England (search results)
  6. ^ Historic England. "Royal Naval Hospital (437649)". Research records (formerly PastScape). Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  7. ^ Revell, Surgeon Vice Admiral A. (28 June 1996). "History of the Royal Naval Hospitals" (PDF). The History of Anaesthesia Society proceedings. p. 86. Retrieved 24 January 2017.
  8. ^ Historic England. "Former Royal Naval Hospital, the Quadrangle Centre, the Quadrangle Centre Creykes, Gordon, Fellowes, Lyster and Sandon Court, the Quadrangle Centre Evans, Hornby, Dudding, Pryn and Norbury Court (1113296)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  9. ^ a b c d "Millfields Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Plan" (PDF). Plymouth City Council. Retrieved 31 July 2019.
  10. ^ The Picture of Plymouth. London: Rees & Curtis. 1812. p. 135.
  11. ^ Historic England Grade II listing: Former Royal Naval Hospital: The Square Nos.4-7
  12. ^ Historic England Grade II listing: Former Royal Naval Hospital Stables
  13. ^ Historic England Grade II listing: Former Royal Naval Hospital: The Square Nos.11, 12 & 13
  14. ^ Historic England Grade II listing: Former Royal Naval Hospital: The Square Nos.8 & 9
  15. ^ Historic England Grade II listing: Former Royal Naval Hospital: The Square No.16
  16. ^ Historic England Grade II listing: Former Royal Naval Hospital: The Square No.17
  17. ^ Historic England Grade II* listing: Former Royal Naval Hospital: Water Tower
  18. ^ Historic England Grade II listing: Former Royal Naval Hospital: The Church of the Good Shepherd

External links

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