St Nicholas Hospital Main Block

St Nicholas' Hospital, Main Block

Naval hospital built between 1809 and 1811, designed by William Pilkington under the supervision of Edward Holl, Architect to the Navy Board. The building was constructed to treat casualties from the North Sea squadron during the Napoleonic War. It became naval barracks in 1818 and subsequently a general hospital.

The hospital is constructed of yellow brick laid in Flemish bond with Portland stone dressings and slate roofs. It follows a quadrangle plan of single-depth wards, with a chapel positioned to the west. The main block is two storeys tall, with each of the four wings connected by single-storey quadrant passageways. The north front features a central five-bay pediment over a rusticated stone entrance arch. Windows throughout are predominantly sash windows with 6/6 glazing bars. A platband at first-floor level runs continuously around the entire exterior. The north front has two full-height square projections added at a later date, each with shallow gabled roofs. The east, west and south fronts also have two added projections in gault brick, with the south front featuring an additional central projection that serves as an entrance.

The internal elevations of each of the four blocks are essentially similar in design. Each contains an arcade beneath round arches comprising 29 bays in the following arrangement: three bays, ten bays, a central three-bay portico section, ten bays, and three bays. The single-storey arcade is set in front of 29 sash windows on the first floor. The north and south porticos feature pediments and project over the full depth of the arcade, while the east and west pedimented porticos break forward only slightly. The ground floor of each portico continues the arcading but employs unfluted Roman Doric columns, doubled at the ends, with a metope frieze. The south portico has had its arcade bays blocked with windows and is topped with a polygonal lantern tower containing clock faces. The corner quadrants each contain two similar columns in antis. The west portico houses the chapel and features plate tracery windows on both floors of the exterior elevation instead of the standard 6/6 sashes.

The interior is extremely plain, with no original main rooms or staircases surviving. The principal staircase to the west of the north entrance is boarded but probably originally had wide stick balusters. The chapel interior rises through two storeys, marked by a moulded string course at the nominal floor-line, and features a coved plastered ceiling without decoration. The cupola, which now dominates the roofline, formerly lit the first-floor operating theatre.

The building represents a unique approach to military hospital planning. Its closest precedent is the late 17th-century Royal Hospital at Kilmainham in Dublin, and it was possibly influenced by Haslar naval hospital. Walkways for moving and exercising patients were standard features in military hospitals of this period. The hospital's well-lit and ventilated design continued to be admired by hospital reformers in the 1860s, and it remains an impressive and original example of hospital planning and military architecture.