High Royds Hospital

High Royds Hospital

A county lunatic asylum, now mental hospital, built between 1884 and 1888 with twentieth-century alterations. Designed by Vickers Edwards, with contractors Whitaker Bros of Horsforth, for The West Riding County Asylum Board. The building is constructed of rock-faced stone with ashlar dressings and Westmorland slate roofs, rising to two and three storeys with single-storey linking corridors.

The hospital follows an echelon plan, with long corridors projecting at an obtuse angle to either side of the central administration block, from which wards range outwards. The central administration block is fronted by the entrance range, with the former ballroom behind it, and service blocks beyond (comprising workshops, kitchens, storerooms, laundry and fire station). The three wards on each side face the front and are progressively stepped outwards to ensure all receive maximum light. The different blocks feature offset plinths and girion bands, with projecting bays under hipped or gabled roofs, broad shouldered and corniced cross-ridge and lateral stacks, and tall pyramidal-roofed towers (formerly water towers) with three-light pointed-arched windows whose lights have cupped heads under hoodmoulds, topped with carved and iron finials. Some towers include louvred stages breaking the roof slope. Windows are predominantly tall; paired, triple sashes, or small-paned upper sashes, though many have been replaced with twentieth-century sashes or pivoting casements. The single-storey corridors are stepped to accommodate changes in ground level. Twentieth-century infill building and additions are not of special interest.

The entrance range is symmetrical, three storeys and seven bays with two-storey, two-bay side-wings set back. Ground floor windows are mostly paired and transomed. The centre block features alternate bays gabled, with the central bay flanked by offset gabled buttresses and a panelled double door up steps with flanking windows, all under a stepped hoodmould. Above are three first-floor windows, four to the second floor, and a stepped three-light window to the gable, which has shaped kneelers and roll-moulded coping. Bays one and two have canted, parapeted ground-floor bay windows. The gables of bays two and six are treated similarly to the central gable, each rising above a projecting, corbelled second floor with a panelled band below an oculus. The roof is hipped with decorative iron finials and includes a central tower (former water tower) with two transomed windows to its lower stage and a clock in a painted arched recess of several orders to the upper stage, topped with a machicolated, embattled parapet (formerly surmounted by a timber-framed, gabled water tank). The side-wings each have a projecting outer bay under a decorative timber-framed gable; the left wing has a panelled door on the right. The ballroom is taller, with round-arched, wooden, mullioned and transomed windows at high level, stepped raised verge with corniced stacks, and two louvred ridge cupolas with ogee metal roofs. Similar ridge louvres appear on other ranges. The workshops have segmental-arched windows, while the former fire station features three tall archways on one side. The front right-hand ward block has a verandah; the equivalent left-hand ward has been altered by two additions of no special interest.

Interior: Good quality contemporary decorative work survives throughout. In the administration block, a panelled board room features an egg-and-dart dentilled cornice and compartmented ceiling, with a stone Tudor-arched fireplace and coloured glass windows with painted bird roundels. The meeting room and reception area retain decorative cornices and compartmental ceilings. Panelled doors sit in decorative architraves, and a good moulded stair with newel and pendants rises to first-floor offices. The main corridor has a decorative terrazzo floor with floral motifs and borders, and Burmantoft tiles to the walls and to elliptical arches with decorative-tiled piers and surrounds, beneath an elaborate cornice and cored ceiling with decorative plasterwork. This windowed section of the corridor has coloured glass windows in glazed-tiled architraves. Secondary corridors have terrazzo floors and tiled walls (some painted over) with collared rafter roof trusses, much of the roof now underdrawn. Less important corridors have brick walling with decorative tile bands at dado level. All corridors include archways forming lockable doorways. The ballroom (now a coffee bar) retains a decorating wall frieze and shell to one wall, with moulded window architraves with imposts and a cored panelled ceiling with elaborate moulded and dentilled cornice. A storeroom features metal columns supporting a longitudinal girder with decorative openwork braces to cross-beams, and boarded walls lined with storage shelves.

High Royds was one of four West Riding County Asylums of its period and is significant for its pioneering use of the echelon plan, being only the second lunatic asylum in England built to this design. The echelon plan allowed all wards to have south-facing views and enabled complete separation of different patient types. At High Royds, one side housed men and the other women, each with separate kitchens. Wards for the sick and infirm were centrally placed for ease of nursing, epileptic patients were positioned at the sides where they would be less disruptive, and incurable patients were placed at the rear. When built, the hospital was completely isolated and functioned as a virtually self-sufficient community.