Administration Block At St Luke'S Hospital

Administration block at St Luke's Hospital, Woodside Avenue, Muswell Hill

This is an administration block of a psychiatric hospital, built between 1928 and 1930 and designed by TA Pole FRIBA. It is constructed of red brick with stone dressings and has a hipped tile roof.

The building is rectangular and two storeys tall, arranged to a symmetrical plan with eleven bays to the main elevations and three bays to each side. The central three-bay section projects slightly forward.

The main south elevation features four sash windows with flat arches of gauged brick on both ground and first floors, positioned either side of the projecting central section. Above the first-floor window arches runs a cornice with dentil decoration. The central section is flanked by stone pilasters and contains three first-floor windows with stone surrounds; the central window is arched and rises through the base of a broken pediment, with floral swag decoration above the window on either side of the keystone. At ground-floor level stands a portico with six Tuscan order columns, through which the main entrance passes via glazed double doors under a fanlight. The roof is crowned at its apex with a square cupola containing a clock. Tall square brick chimneys with stone dressings sit at each end of the south roof slope, with a third rectangular chimney positioned to the east of the cupola on the north slope.

The north elevation has similar plain sash windows under flat arches, with an arched window at mezzanine level to the west of centre lighting the stairwell. A tile-roofed covered walkway adjoins the central entrance, linking the administration block to 19th-century houses on either side and to treatment blocks arranged in a semi-hexagon around gardens (neither the walkway nor these ancillary buildings are included in the listing).

Both side elevations contain entrances flanked by sash windows, with three windows above. The west elevation features a double-door entrance recessed under an open porch with a round gauged brick arch. The windows here are more closely grouped, with eight panes rather than twelve.

Interior

Corridors radiate from the centre of the ground floor, supported by arches rising from pilasters with moulded capitals. A central cross-passage connects front and back doors. The arches to the side corridors have been filled in and fitted with fire doors. Rooms are arranged on either side of the corridors, with all original joinery intact: moulded architraves, six-panelled doors, dado and picture rails, cornices and fireplace surrounds, though the fireplaces themselves are boarded over. The stairwell is off the west corridor. Plain cast-iron stick balusters with a wooden handrail descend to basement rooms (now used as storage), while first-floor balusters are of decorative wrought ironwork.

The first-floor plan largely mirrors the ground floor, though the west end is more complex in arrangement. A large opening has been cut into the north side of the east corridor to create a dispensary window. The central front section is dominated by a large boardroom, a bright room whose polished floorboards, doors and panelled window and fireplace surrounds reflect natural light from seven windows. The vaulted ceiling of the central section is decorated with two plaster ribs rising from paired consoles set below the cornice, with Ionic-capital columns to either side.

Historical context

St Luke's Hospital was founded by the St Luke's Charity as successor to its Old Street asylum. The charity itself was established in 1750 to provide treatment for poor lunatics, opening its first hospital at Windmill Hill, Upper Moorfields in the same year. The hospital relocated in 1782–87 to a new purpose-built facility on Old Street. The sale of the Old Street site to the Bank of England in 1917 funded the purchase of three houses on Woodside Avenue. In 1927, architect TA Pole designed a scheme that linked the existing houses by covered ways to treatment blocks to the north, with a new administration block positioned between two of the houses, Norton Lees (which became a nurses' home) and Roseneath. The hospital's stated aim was to treat a small number of educated people of slender means, its therapeutic approach apparently following pioneering methods associated with Henry Maudsley, founder of the Maudsley Hospital in Camberwell (whose administration block is also listed Grade II). Initially housing 50 patients, the hospital expanded to 100 beds in 1948 to qualify as a teaching hospital, becoming part of the Middlesex Hospital's Department of Psychological Medicine. It now forms part of the Camden and Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust.