Former Claybury Hospital

Former Claybury Hospital

Asylum built 1888-1890, designed by G.T. Hine. Built of red brick with stone dressings, featuring gabled and hipped slate roofs and brick stacks.

The building employs an echelon or "broad-V" plan. A central east-west corridor contains the chapel, flanked by the medical superintendent's house and administration block to the south and a recreation hall to the north. Four ward blocks project from the east and west ends of the central corridor, with obtusely-angled corridors running north-east and north-west containing projecting south-facing wards. Four airing courts are created within the area enclosed by these corridors, divided by north-south and east-west corridors with ward blocks. A service area including laundry and kitchen stands to the rear (north) of the recreation hall, flanked by north-south corridors.

The chapel has a cruciform plan with a six-bay aisled nave and polygonal sanctuary end. The sanctuary features two-light decorated windows and a broached octagonal south-east spire. The transepts have three-light decorated windows, the aisles have grouped lancets, and there are three-light clerestory windows and a three-light north window.

The medical superintendent's house stands to the east in Domestic Tudor style. It comprises a two-storey, three-window range with moulded stone mullioned and transomed windows set within a slightly projecting central bay. A gabled bay projects to the right, and a canted bay with pyramidal roof stands to the left. The central entrance is a Tudor-arched doorway with pointed-arched overlights and flanking lancets with moulded architraves.

The administration block to the west follows a similar style, with its roofline broken by a central gabled bay flanked by canted bays with pyramidal roofs.

The recreation hall behind the chapel is a tall single-storey structure with a ten-window range. Buttresses divide the bays, each fitted with gauged brick semi-circular arches over stained-glass windows. A Gothic-style tower to the rear has an upper stage framed by gablets over foiled panels, surmounted by corner pinnacles and a pyramidal roof.

Two-storey corridors connect to two to three-storey ward blocks featuring square-headed and segmental-headed sash windows and canted bays surmounted by pyramidal roofs. Pyramidal-roofed octagonal turrets mark the junctions of corridors at the north-east and north-west corners. An octagonal water tower with broached pyramidal roof and a pedimented doorway stands to the north-west. A sixteen-bay laundry block has been altered.

Interior: The chapel contains engaged shafts with foliate capitals in the sanctuary, five-bay nave arcades with moulded capitals to stone piers, and an arch-braced open timber roof. Engaged brick shafts frame the window jambs. Two pointed-arched doorways with foliate capitals to engaged shafts occupy the west end.

The administration block features stained glass in the front doors and flanking screen windows. The lobby and hall have mosaic floors and glazed brick dados, with pedimented glazed-tile architraves to doorways displaying Renaissance-style ornament. A pointed-arched entry with foliate capitals to engaged marble shafts leads to the hall, which has a three-bay arcade in similar style beside an open-well staircase with a decorative wrought iron balustrade and fine stained glass to the stairlight.

The recreation hall displays elaborate Elizabethan style with a Renaissance-style frieze to the panelled dado and a fine ribbed segmental-arched ceiling. A proscenium arch with a bust set in a nowy-headed pediment, flanked by obelisks, surmounts coupled Corinthian columns. A gallery occupies the west end.

Historical significance: This is the major work of the specialist asylum architect G.T. Hine and the most important asylum built in England after 1875. It was the first asylum to successfully employ the echelon plan, which subsequently became the basis for all later asylum designs.