Glen House, Princess Christian's Hospital

Glen House, Princess Christian's Hospital

A residential home for the mentally handicapped, originally designed as the girls' home at Princess Christian's Farm Colony. The farm colony was a self-supporting community funded by the 19th-century National Association for Promoting the Welfare of the Feebleminded, established by Queen Victoria's daughter Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, her sister Princess Marie Louise, and four local residents including Dr Langdon Down, who first described Down's syndrome. The colony was opened in 1910 and was absorbed into the National Health Service in 1948. The complex was built on land and a farmstead purchased from Lord Derby.

Glen House itself was designed in 1916 by Clough Williams-Ellis, with additions and alterations made before 1923 by Conrad Birdwood Willcocks. A further addition was constructed in the circa 1930s by the colonists themselves. The building is constructed of roughcast with a probably late 20th-century tiled roof and brick chimney stacks.

The architectural style is plain early 18th century. Although the north elevation shares some similarities with an almshouse, the garden elevation is closer to a small country house. The later 1930s addition, though out of scale with the original, uses matching materials and windows.

The building is a long, approximately rectangular structure facing north, with the 1930s addition at the east end. The original 1916 range is symmetrically planned with double depth and two span roofs. The centre block sits slightly south of the flanking wings, forming a recessed entrance block to the north and containing a large room (probably the original dining room) that projects forward to the south. The east and west wings feature longitudinal corridors with small rooms opening off them on both north and south sides. The first floor corridor is lit by roof lights. Identical flights of stairs rise at the outer end of each wing, with the west wing preserving a doorway facing the stair in its western end. Symmetrically positioned blocked doorways into the wings exist on the north side near the stairs. Although there have been some alterations to the original plan, including new internal partitions and the removal of one chimney stack, these changes have not destroyed the overall layout of 1916.

The north elevation is long and low, single storey with attic accommodation. The roof is hipped at the ends. The chimney stacks have tall, slim rectangular shafts with hollow-chamfered coping. The 1916 building preserves its original twelve-pane sash windows with thick rectangular glazing bars.

The three-bay entrance block is set back in the centre beneath a large gable in the form of a moulded pediment with a platband below. A central round-headed outer doorway with a keyblock is flanked by paired pilasters with twelve-pane sashes to left and right. In the gable above the doorway, twelve-pane sashes flank a round-headed niche containing a large statue representing one of the original farm colonists. It is a high-quality realist sculpture of a girl in what was presumably the 1916 uniform—a cotton cap, long dress and apron. The girl holds a scroll. The windows and niche, which is crowned with a ball finial, form a cartouche with scrollwork in relief to left and right. Above the entrance block on the main ridge is an openwork timber bellcote in the form of a bell-shaped cupola; the bell is missing.

Six-bay flanking wings have a platband below the deep eaves, each wing with three flat-roofed attic dormers. Evidence of a blocked doorway to each wing survives; in the west wing this has been replaced by a twelve-pane sash.

The south elevation was originally symmetrical. The two-storey four-bay centre block projects forward, whilst the six-bay wings are single-storey with attic accommodation, with platbands below the deep eaves. The centre block has rusticated quoins and a parapet above a deep cornice with a dentil frieze. First floor windows are twelve-pane sashes, ground floor windows are six-over nine-pane sashes (one converted to a door), and there are first floor oculi to the returns. The wings feature flat-roofed attic dormers with paired sashes and an additional dormer to the east wing. The 1930s east block repeats the details of the centre block with rusticated quoins, cornice and similar sash windows but with moulded glazing bars.

Interior joinery surviving from 1916 includes two-panel early 18th-century style doors with fielded panels. The stairs have alternating splat and turned balusters.

Plans and a photograph of the front elevation were published in 'Recent English Domestic Architecture', Vol. 5, edited by Macartney (circa 1916). The photograph demonstrates that the doorways have been altered since construction.

Clough Williams-Ellis, best known for his development at Portmeirion in Wales, was not a prolific architect. Glen House is an interesting example of philanthropic Edwardian architecture, with its scale and detail designed to accord with the philosophy of a community which did not incarcerate the mentally handicapped.