Bethel Hospital

Bethel Hospital

Former hospital, now children's psychiatric clinic. Built in the late 17th or early 18th century, with substantial additions throughout the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. The building was significantly rebuilt and repaired in 1899 by architect E. Boardman. Constructed of brick with masonry dressings and plain tile and slate roofs.

The building follows an H-plan with a closing north range and extensive dormitory ranges. The earliest block is a 2-storey U-shaped structure with north wings and a south facade of 7 irregular bays. Windows throughout are 18th-century sashes with glazing bars, featuring flat hoods on consoles with carved ends.

The north range fronting Bethel Street was refaced and widened in 1899 to form a 2-storey plus attic storey symmetrical 5-bay block. The ends were returned southwards to meet the heightened north wings, which were raised to 3 storeys. Windows retain sashes with rubbed brick flat arches above. The central entry has a shouldered architrave with triangular head and exaggerated keystone. Side lights with scrolled consoles sit beneath a carved oriel window. The first floor contains a Venetian window and the second floor a double sash window with apron. A semi-circular gable topped with masonry coping, quoins and ironwork weathervane crowns this section.

Interior features include an entrance corridor with a coved ceiling, blocked door surround and panelling of 1907. The original north door retains primitive Ionic pilasters supporting a segmental pediment, with a later inner door featuring a semi-circular Gibbs surround. Ground floor cross and axial ceiling beams have nicked chamfer stops. Roofs employ staggered butt purlin collar frames with stopped-chamfered ties. The main spine has 3 dormers with single dormers in each wing.

The later south wings, creating the full H-plan, are each 2-storey plus attic with an arched recess in the gable, lunette with masonry arch and cill course. The west wing features smaller first-floor lunettes facing the gardens. Late 19th-century ground floor sash windows are present throughout, with a single-storey bay on the west wing only. Four small dormers appear on each side of both wings. 19th-century ridge tiles cap the roofs. Roof construction features tie beams set lower than the wall plate to allow greater attic space. Each truss has double butt purlins, collar and downward raking strut with overlaid common rafters added in the 19th century contemporary with the ridge tiles and gable coping.

A ground floor room in the east wing is decorated with an early to mid-18th-century heavy torus plasterwork cornice and a panelled overmantel with broken pediment above a later shouldered fireplace surround carved with a female head and hanging cloth in stone. This room is lit by an extremely large sash window in the south gable.

Two-storey dormitory cell ranges flank the width of the H-plan, following the later Bethel Street and Little Bethel Street frontages. Sash windows throughout retain original small panes.

A repositioned foundation stone bears an inscription reading: "This house was built for benefit of distrest Lunaticks An Dom: 1713.....Foundress was Mary Chapman, who lived there until her death in 1724."