Whitlingham Hospital Blocks 04, 05, 06

Whitlingham Hospital Blocks 04, 05, 06

A country house, now used as a hospital, with attached conservatory, service wing and billiard room. The main house was built around 1865 by H.E. Coe of Cambridge for Sir Robert Harvey. Following Harvey's suicide, the property was acquired in 1872 by J.J. Colman. The service wing, billiard room and various alterations were added between 1902 and 1905 by architect Edward Boardman. The conservatory underwent restoration in the late 20th century.

The house is constructed of red brick with ashlar dressings, featuring gabled and hipped roofs with plain tiles, coped gables and finials, and prominent multiple ridge stacks. It displays Renaissance Revival styling, rising to two storeys plus attics with a five-window range. Windows are predominantly leaded cross-casements with stone mullions and transoms. The entrance front faces north and features a recessed centre with a small gable, side bays with parapets, and larger end bays with gables. A large central porch, dated 1905, contains round-arched double doors and a fanlight, with a flat roof behind a balustrade. The right gabled wing incorporates a square bay window at two storeys with cross-mullioned windows and balustrade. To the right sits a set-back range of two windows with a 20th-century lift tower. The right return has two canted bay windows at two storeys with balustrades, and gables above containing three-light windows. The garden front extends across seven windows and features a recessed centre with a large gable and projecting end bays, each with a large and small gable. The larger outer gables contain canted bay windows at two storeys with four-light windows above. A central Tuscan portico of three bays with balustrade opens onto the garden.

The conservatory features cast iron and wrought iron on a brick plinth, arranged in ten bays with an apsidal end. Flanking aisles run the full length to the north and five bays to the south. Central double doors are surmounted by elaborate scrolled grilles in front of the glass, with semicircular steps before them. The main uprights feature volute capitals supporting a scrolled frieze and dentillated cornice. Below the cornice are opening oval lights, and above are rectangular lights. The steep pitched roof includes a clerestory with oval lights. The interior contains semicircular T-section trusses on brackets, quatrefoil columns to the aisles with volute capitals and traceried spandrels, and a stone floor with geometrical patterns. Opposite the apse stands a round-arched fountain in ashlar with a mosaic panel, foliage in the spandrels, and a mask spout. Above it is a round-arched arcaded window of three lights, and above again, an ashlar balcony on brackets with elaborate wrought iron railing.

The service wing is built in Tudor Revival style, with a brick ground floor and sham timber framing with roughcast nogging above, plain tile roofs with stacks matching those of the main house, rising to two storeys plus attics.

The billiard room to the west is executed in Arts and Crafts style, constructed of red brick with a timber-framed gable and brick nogging, and a plain tile roof. It contains terracotta plaques from the 16th century, relocated from Arminghall Hall in Norfolk, a 15th-century stone doorcase with four-centred arch and relief panel with moulded door, and re-used linenfold panelling.

The main house interior features a central hallway with a screen containing a rusticated round arch and double columns flanked by sidelights. An open well wooden stair with square-turned balustrade rises through a coved ceiling decorated with swags and foliage border. A ground floor room on the garden front contains an elliptical arched plaster vault with strapwork and a Renaissance Revival chimneypiece, flanked by matching bookcases in recesses. Another ground floor room to the north displays considerable strapwork ornament.