Farnham Road Hospital

Farnham Road Hospital (formerly The Royal Surrey County Hospital)

Hospital, designed by Edward Lower with advice from Florence Nightingale. The foundation stone was laid on 3rd July 1863 and the building opened on 27th April 1866, with a Neo-Georgian porch added in the early 20th century.

The building is constructed of coursed sandstone blocks with brick dressings and angle quoins, with plain tiled roofs hipped over pavilions and lantern. It follows a rectangular plan with a symmetrical front range of three storeys and attics in the central pavilion, two storeys and attics in the flanking wings and pavilions, and a basement storey in the right-hand end wing.

The centrepiece features a wooden lantern on a lead-covered plinth rising from the ridge of the central pavilion, crowned with a swept pyramidal roof with bracketed eaves, gablets and a scrolled-iron weathervane. Doric pilasters at the angles flank two round-arched and keystoned openings on each face, with a clock face set into the front of the supporting plinth. A plinth runs across the elevation with a diagonal brick dentil string course over the ground floor, a sill band across the second floor and a broad plat band to the eaves.

The three-bay central pavilion with one-bay return walls contains glazing-bar sash fenestration. The second floor has three gauged-brick, segmentally-headed 12-pane windows with keystones in brick surrounds, whilst the first floor displays three similar but taller 18-pane windows. The ground floor holds two windows flanking a flat-roofed portico beneath a stone-coped brick-panelled parapet with a stone centre panel. Outer brick piers on pedestal plinths flank thin Doric columns in antis with railings between them. One bay links to wings set back either side, each with a large gabled half-dormer over an attic sash window and keystoned segmental heads to single sashes on the first and ground floors.

The five-bay wings either side are set back again, each with small louvred gablets in the roofs. The first floors feature tall 18-pane glazing-bar sash windows under gauged-brick keystoned heads that break into the eaves band, with stone sills below breaking into the sill band. The ground floors contain tripartite glazing-bar sash windows alternating with single 12-pane, segmentally-headed sashes; one tripartite window in the right-hand wing is blocked and one early 20th-century casement has been added to the right of centre.

Projecting pavilions at the ends of the wings stand under steeply-pitched roofs, each with one brick-dressed glazed panel in each face under the eaves. Two tall and narrow 8-pane sash windows appear on the front of each pavilion on each floor, with one similar window on each floor of the return sides. Further three-bay wings to the ends are set back, with similar fenestration to the main five-bay wings, although the right-hand end wing has a basement storey and five windows on the ground floor.

A single-storey flat-roofed extension extends from the left end; an early 20th-century link building to the rear at right angles connects to a parallel range across the rear with further early 20th-century extensions stepping down to the sides.

The original hospital building cost £17,000 and was dedicated to the memory of Prince Albert. Queen Victoria became a patron of the hospital and donated 100 Guineas towards the cost of construction.