Royal Sea Bathing Hospital

Royal Sea Bathing Hospital, Margate

A former sea bathing hospital founded in 1791, built between 1793 and 1796 by the Reverend John Pridden, one of the hospital's founders. The building underwent substantial additions and transformations over nearly a century, with work in 1816, circa 1820, circa 1853, 1857–58, and circa 1880 by architect James Knowles Junior.

The original block, greatly altered, remains in the quadrangle behind the present entrance, forming the eastern arm. It is constructed of yellow stock brick with stone dressings and a hipped slated roof. A southern single-storey wing was added in 1816, and a northern two-storey wing facing the sea was added in the 1820s, forming one arm of an H-shaped plan.

Around 1853, the buildings were comprehensively transformed into a handsome and uniform piece of Greek Revival classicism. The storeys were raised to two throughout, and a monumental tetrastyle Doric portico was added to the west-facing entrance front. The columns were said to have come from the nearby Holland House at Kingsgate. At the same time, two single-storey cross-plan extensions were added to the western ends of the north and south wings, designed as wards for children; the northern girls' ward was later raised to two storeys.

James Knowles Junior added a long single-storey block of wards adjoining the old hospital to the west, creating an enclosed quadrangle in the centre. These wards are in red and black brick with a terracotta balustrade. The Doric portico was subsequently moved to form a new entrance front facing Canterbury Road. Adjacent to the wards to the south is Knowles' indoor heated salt-water swimming bath, now converted to a ward. This is a domestic-style block in red and black brick with stone dressings, well-lit by two storeys of windows.

The current entrance front is a two-storey block of nine sash windows fronted by the Doric portico. The entablature is inscribed "Royal Sea Bath Hospital Founded 1791". Flanking this are two single-storey pavilions, each with two sashes and an inscribed pediment; the left inscribed "1858" and the right "1882".

The hospital was pioneering in its use of open-air treatment for patients suffering from tubercular complaints. It was founded for the scrofulous poor of London by Dr John Coakley Lettsom, a Quaker physician. Initially open only during summer months, with patients bathing in the sea from bathing machines, the addition of an indoor bath in 1858 allowed the wards to open year-round. The design incorporated open arcaded verandas for patients from its inception, anticipating by more than a century the open-air treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis that would later become standard practice.

Around 1880, Sir Erasmus Wilson, President of the Royal College of Surgeons and director of the hospital, gave £30,000 for enlargement, which included Knowles' ward wing, the indoor heated salt-water pool, and a chapel. Wards were used for sleeping only during inclement weather; otherwise beds remained on the verandah day and night, and the flat roof of Knowles' wing was used as a promenade. The hospital continued to treat surgical tuberculosis until the early 1950s, when improvements in treatment, preventative medicine, and the unprecedented rise in the standard of living made tuberculosis an uncommon disease.