St Charles' Hospital

TQ 2381 NE 249-/9/10023

EXMOOR STREET St Charles' Hospital

II Hospital, built as the workhouse infirmary of the St Marylebone Board of Poor Law Guardians. 1879-81 by Henry Saxon Snell, assisted by his sons. Stock brick with minimal use of stone dressings, slate roof.

'Nightingale plan' of central administration block and kitchens (of two storeys, rising to four and five at rear with water tower over) flanked each side by two three-storey blocks of two seven-bay wards per floor (so-called 'paired wards') linked by spinal corridor and two-storey iron walkways at either end, the latter with columns enlivened by decorative spandrels and also decorative railings. Each ward originally had a nursing sister's room nearest the corridor and ablution facilities at its further end, these features treated respectively as projecting and separated bays. Three-storey entrance block of medical officers' dwellings either side of carriageway with double-height chapel over. Subsidiary chapel formerly serving the mortuary now the hospital chapel, a single-storey unit at east side of central block.

Dentiled brick cornice to all elements. All elevations with original sashes, mostly with stone sills and lintels, but the more prominent in the administration block and projecting bays are treated as lancets, sometimes paired or in threes, under brick hood-moulds with flat tympanum. Decorative treatment to the ablution bays at end of the wards also in ventilating towers with chequered brickwork and pyramidal roofs with tiny louvres set in timber dormers. These motifs repeated with even more gusto in the prominent central water-tower, which projects on brick corbels, with vertical banded decoration, stone cornices, lancet louvres treated as dormers in aediculed brick surrounds and pyramidal roof.

Entrance block with two bays of medical officers' accommodation having sash windows, those to top floor with pointed heads and joined by hood moulds, either side of broad carriage arch with chapel over. Chapel and officers' accommodation reached up external stair enclosed behind railing. Chapel with timber wagon roof and plate tracery, some now blocked in conversion to sports use in 1940s, decorated ridge piece with louvres, and ventilating finial. Blind arcading with moulded plaster decoration survives in interior, but most fixtures have been transferred to former mortuary chapel, including memorial stained glass to Horace J Potter, died 1924, by his brother Leonard; and to S J Cockrell, died 1934. Later mortuary building, detached to rear, is not of special interest.

Included as a fine example of a workhouse infirmary, the first hospitals paid for out of public funds following the Metropolitan Poor Law Act of 1867 permitting their erection in London. It is a skilled design using simple details and materials.

Source: Survey of London, North Kensington, vol. XXXVII, 1973, pp.330-1.

Listing NGR: TQ2376981897