South Wing At St Thomas' Hospital Excluding Post 1926 Courtyard Infill Buildings

St Thomas' Hospital was built between 1868 and 1871 to the design of Henry Currey, Architect and Surveyor to St Thomas' Hospital. Additions were made in 1901 and 1904 by his son, Percival Currey, and in 1925 by Harold Currey. The building was partly demolished following Second World War bomb damage and has undergone later 20th-century alterations.

Materials and Style

The hospital is constructed of red Fareham brick with Portland stone dressings. The balustrading and some decorative detailing are in artificial stone, with slate roofs. The design is in the Italianate style with some French Renaissance detailing; the later additions are in 'Wrenaissance' style.

Original Plan and Subsequent Changes

The site is aligned north-south alongside the River Thames. As originally built, the hospital formed a symmetrical composition with a lower, linked administrative building to the north. The whole comprised 900-foot-long elevations facing east to Lambeth Palace Road and west to the river.

The east elevation had a central entrance block flanked by long two- and three-storey wings on either side, containing services, operating theatres, and an out-patients department. Long axial corridors ran north-south along the entire length of the building at ground and first floor, linking the rooms along the eastern frontage and the pavilion wards behind. Long, rectangular parallel ward 'pavilions' projected from the frontage at right angles to the river with open courtyards between and a broader central courtyard. The rear (west) elevation of the chapel and entrance hall faced into the central courtyard.

The east frontage was radically altered in 1901 by the addition of extra storeys. In 1904, a two-storey Governors' Hall and Committee Room block was added in the central courtyard, with a lower link to the entrance hall behind. That part of the original hospital to the north of the entrance hall, comprising three of the six pavilion wards and the administrative block, no longer survives. The overall plan form of the surviving section, defined by the axial corridors and pavilion blocks, is well preserved.

West Elevation

The long, monumental riverside frontage is defined by the end elevations of the three pavilions, each linked by a colonnade of paired Tuscan columns, now partly infilled. The colonnade between the Governors' Hall and north pavilion has a round pediment.

The broader end (west) façades of the three pavilion blocks are identical. Each is of nine bays, comprising five central bays flanked by square two-bay corner towers. The central bays are arcaded at ground, first and second floors and have paired Composite columns at third floor, originally forming open loggias but now mainly glazed. The corner towers have rusticated angle pilasters; the third floor with coupled Composite pilasters. There is a deep modillion cornice (which continues around the entire block) and a solid parapet. French-style pavilion roofs to the towers with oeil-de-boeuf dormers are surmounted by elegant cupolas with ornate wrought-iron balustrading and cross finials.

The long, inner (north and south) elevations of the pavilions are of thirteen bays (excluding towers) with mansard roofs and brick pedimented dormers. Windows are round-headed to ground and third floors and square-headed at the first and second, all with stone transoms. Composite pilasters appear between third-floor windows. The intersection of each pavilion with the east frontage is expressed by broader, square towers of five bays; each has a mansard roof and an Italianate cupola with ornate wrought-ironwork. The elevations of these blocks are detailed in a similar manner to the west corner towers. Windows to all elevations are timber sashes.

Between the north and central pavilion is the rear elevation of the pedimented 1901 block on the east frontage. This is of three storeys and seven bays with a pediment to the central five bays, which are framed by rusticated pilasters. The ground and part of first floor are obscured. Round-headed windows appear at first floor. A row of oculi to the second storey are framed in square architraves with crossettes. There is a modillion cornice. The courtyard in front of this building is infilled by Shepherd's Hall, a nurses' restaurant of 1925.

Governors' Hall

This stands to the north of the remaining three pavilion blocks. It is in 'Wrenaissance' style, with a pitched roof and central octagonal domed cupola, and has a balustraded parapet. The ground floor has Tuscan half-columns in antis. Serlian windows appear at the gable ends with a blocked oculus above. The sides are of five bays; the central bay is blind, flanked by rusticated pilasters and Composite pilasters at upper floor. There are rusticated angle pilasters and sash windows. A lower two-storey building to the rear, in similar style with roof lantern, forms a link to the entrance hall.

Entrance Hall and Chapel

This is two storeys in three stages, with a deep modillion cornice and balustraded parapet, and has a pitched roof. The west elevation is of five bays, the lower part obscured by the link to Governors' Hall. The central three bays of the visible upper stage are recessed to form a loggia with coupled Composite columns and round-headed windows.

Angle towers are surmounted by octagonal stone cupolas with deep modillion cornices. The top stage has engaged Composite columns to the angles and round-headed blind windows; the middle stage has rusticated angle pilasters and side windows with circular tracery. Side elevations have round-headed clerestorey openings with circular stone tracery and Composite capitals to imposts. Brick chimneys along the roof ridge have acroteria. Smaller cupolas appear at the angles of the roof on the east side.

To either side of the chapel are lower three-storey blocks with round-headed windows to ground and first floors and square-headed windows to the second floor. There are rusticated angle pilasters.

East Elevation

The original nine-bay entrance block to the north is three storeys with a mansard and pedimented dormers. It has rusticated angle pilasters. The central three bays have a raised parapet with windows and a balustraded parapet with antifixae to the end. Ogee cupolas to the roof are surmounted by wrought-iron crosses. The ground floor and portico are currently (2006) obscured by later structures.

To the south are long ranges from the 1901 remodelling: eleven bays and four storeys (the top storey is a later addition), followed by a pedimented range of five bays and four storeys. These are in Wrenaissance style with round-headed windows and keystones, rusticated angle pilasters, and a first-floor wrought-iron balcony. A chimney to the south is in similar style. A fourteen-bay block to the south, largely rebuilt in the 1960s, is not of special interest above ground-floor level.

South Elevation

This is the side elevation of the southernmost pavilion ward, which is given slightly grander treatment as the southern termination of the hospital. The central range is of eleven bays with the central three bays projecting.

Interior

The interior has not been fully inspected, but key areas are described here. The arcaded former entrance hall has pilasters between arches and a moulded cornice. There are five busts of eminent doctors on each side, all on granite pillars. A marble statue of Queen Victoria by M Noble, 1873, shows her seated in coronation robes with crown, orb and sceptre, on a panelled plinth inscribed: 'Her Majesty Queen Victoria. The Gift of John Musgrove Bart. President 1873'. The floor is red and buff tile. A well staircase on the north side has a wrought-iron double-scrolled balustrade and mahogany handrail.

To the west of the entrance hall is a long axial corridor running north-south. It has a jack-arch roof carried on pilasters.

The first-floor chapel has a five-bay nave with aisles and shorter ritual east and west bays forming sanctuary and narthex. The coffered, barrelled nave roof has ribs resting on a quasi-Composite entablature whose pilasters rest against the nave piers and which frames an arcade with similar capitals. The aisles are groin-vaulted with glazed oculi at the crossing of each vault. The arcaded reredos has Doulton terracotta relief panels of Resurrection scenes. A Doulton panel in the south aisle to the memory of Sarah Elizabeth Wardroper (Matron) depicts the Good Samaritan. There is a monument to Henry Currey in the north aisle. The north aisle also has a marble tablet to various nursing staff and stewards, and a monument to Florence Nightingale. Original pews and tiled floors remain. There is a wrought-iron communion rail and an organ at the west end.

The two-storey link block of 1904 between the entrance hall and Governors' Hall has a handsome mahogany open-string staircase with two fluted columns to each step and a chamfered square newel post. A plaque commemorates the refounding of St Thomas' by Edward VI in 1551 and the opening of the hospital on the present site. There is also a marble tablet set within an aedicule to Charles Gassiot, merchant, who endowed the Nurses' Home in 1906.

The Committee Room on the first floor has a ribbed coved ceiling with central lantern, dado-panelling, a neo-Georgian style timber chimneypiece and door surrounds. The interior of the Governors' Hall was not inspected; this was understood to have been altered and subdivided, and subsequently refurbished in 1991 following the original style.

The interior of Shepherd's Hall has a frieze of bas-relief panels depicting scenes of figures. Doulton tiles from the demolished 1901 children's ward, painted by W Rowe, depicting nursery rhyme scenes, are displayed in panels throughout the hospital.

Historical Context

Built at a cost of £400,000, the hospital replaced the old St Thomas' Hospital (founded 1116; rebuilt 1693-1709), which stood in Borough High Street, Southwark, until 1860 when the hospital was obliged to move due to the enlargement of London Bridge Station. It accommodated 588 beds in six pavilions, each ward with 28 beds.

The 'pavilion plan' originated in France in the 18th century, exemplified by the Hôpital de Lariboisière, Paris, 1854. It was popularised in England by John Robertson and George Godwin, and championed by Florence Nightingale. Each pavilion had long open wards which were cross-ventilated by large sash windows, in order to reduce the mortality rate from infectious diseases—a principle which was to dominate hospital planning for the next 50 years. It was the original premises of the Nightingale Nurses' training school.

Significance

St Thomas' Hospital is of major architectural interest as the grandest and most lavish of the English pavilion-plan hospitals, a bold and ambitious architectural set-piece which exploited to the full its riverside setting opposite Westminster Palace in the manner of a series of Venetian palazzi. It is of outstanding historic interest in the continuity of London's oldest hospital foundation, as an early and influential British pavilion-plan hospital built at an important watershed in 19th-century healthcare reform, and as the premises of Florence Nightingale's seminal nursing school.

Special architectural interest lies principally in the surviving elevations from Currey's original design and the early 20th-century additions by Currey Junior, in the surviving plan form defined by the relationship of the pavilion wards and axial corridors, and in the internal spaces described above, including that of Shepherd's Hall. The fourteen-bay block at the south end of the east elevation above ground-floor level (that being part of the Victorian build, and of special interest) is not of special interest.

Notwithstanding its reduced state, the South Wing of St Thomas' Hospital is one of London's most prominent and distinguished riverside buildings, and has outstanding group value with Westminster Palace, a World Heritage Site. It also has group value with the former medical school of 1870, similarly designed by Currey.