Fleming Memorial Hospital

Fleming Memorial Hospital is a hospital for sick children, built in 1887 by John Quilter and George Wheelhouse for John Fleming. It is constructed of red brick in a Flemish bond, with sandstone ashlar dressings, and a lakeland slate roof with lead cupolas. The building is in a Jacobean style.

The symmetrical front elevation is two and three storeys high, with fifteen bays. It includes a plinth, quoins, a frieze and cornice above each floor, and coped parapets. The projecting five-bay central section has a frontispiece of three full storeys, featuring glazed double doors and a fanlight within pilasters and an enriched archivolt. This is framed by paired, half-fluted pilasters and an entablature, with carved spandrels, and incorporates a two-storey canted bay in ashlar. Flanking two-storey bays have angle canted backs leading to three-storey outer bays, topped with shaped gables featuring oculi and bands. The symmetrical five-bay outer sections have central, wider windows with scrolled feet and balustraded balconies on the first floor, with segmental pediments above. Projecting chimney breasts are located between each pair of outer bays.

Most windows are stone mullioned and transomed, set within quoined surrounds. An exception is the first-floor centre window and the second-floor windows within the gabled bays, which have been altered. A pyramidal roof over the central bay is topped with a terracotta finial and tall flanking chimneys. All chimneys are corniced and quoined. Small cupolas with lead bases, arcaded downs, and wrought iron finials are situated centrally on the ridge of the outer sections, with similar treatment on the returns.

The interior features a main staircase with an elaborate cast iron balustrade and a domed rooflight. Original panelling is present in the hall and stairway. The doorway pilasters rest on two dated foundation stones; one laid by Lady Armstrong, with names of professionals, and the other recording the eponymous benefactor’s gift "in the Jubilee year of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria in memory of Mary his loving wife who died 7th March 1882.” A later 20th-century insertion on the right return is not of particular architectural interest.