Former Towers Hospital

The former Towers Hospital is a substantial former psychiatric hospital constructed between 1869 and 1870 by EL Stephens, Borough Surveyor, originally as the Leicester Borough Asylum. Later alterations and additions occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. It was built by Osborne Bros.

The building is constructed of red brick with ashlar dressings to the main fronts and blue brick dressings elsewhere. The roofs are steep pitched, clad in plain tiles, with decorative ridge tiles and shaped coped gables, featuring various side wall and ridge stacks.

The architectural style is Jacobean Revival. The main building is arranged around a cruciform plan, with radiating cross wings. A central range includes a projecting element housing the medical superintendent's residence and service rooms, linked by a corridor to the chapel and staff accommodation at the rear. Flanking the central range are gallery wards, two storeys high with attic space. The cross wings are similarly designed, with projecting end bays containing day rooms. Each wing features a square staircase tower, topped by an octagonal spire. The three-storey, three-bay centrepiece has a projecting tower porch with machiolated eaves. A square leaded dome surmounts the porch, topped with a wind vane, and is flanked by shaped gables each including a roundel. A segment arched doorway is accessed by steps, featuring clustered columns and an overlight, with renewed double doors. Above the doorway is a canted oriel window, two storeys high, with cross-mullioned windows. Further above are two narrow lights. Side bays incorporate canted cross-mullioned bay windows, two storeys high, with balustrades and cross-mullioned windows under shaped gables.

The ward ranges, seven bays wide, similarly feature cross-mullioned windows. A slightly projecting central three-bay section has shaped gables. A central square bay window, three storeys high, was added in the late 20th century. Attic windows are housed within half-hipped dormers. The end bays have a canted two-storey bay window with five lights, above which is a cross-mullioned window under a shaped gable, with one window being renewed. Returns display similar fenestration, with gabled and half-hipped dormers. The staircase towers, also three storeys high, have three-light pointed arched windows on the upper floor. The rear elevations contain various pointed arched openings, gabled and half-hipped bays, and dormers. A central rear range, including the chapel, is double depth and two storeys high, with five bays. Three prominent side wall stacks are present. A central doorway is flanked by two windows, and above are five two-light pointed arched windows to the chapel, with shafts and hood moulds. Double gabled returns have two four-light pointed arched windows.

The interior entrance corridor has an altered, ashlar dogleg staircase, updated in the late 20th century. The chapel corridor features two moulded, shouldered doorways with hood moulds and foliage roundels. The chapel itself contains a simpler segmental pointed doorway. Interior stained glass windows have a sill band and hood moulds. A hammer beam roof is supported by arch bracing and corbels. A 19th-century wooden pulpit is present, with other fittings having been renewed.