Former Holloway Sanatorium at Virginia Water

Former Holloway Sanatorium at Virginia Water

Former sanatorium for private patients with mental conditions, now converted to housing with communal amenity areas for residents. Built between 1873 and 1885 to designs by W H Crossland for Thomas Holloway, a patent medicine manufacturer turned philanthropist.

The main building is constructed of red brick with Portland stone dressings and slate roofs. The façade is almost symmetrical, with what were originally private bedrooms and day areas arranged on four storeys for male and female private patients. These spaces flank a central entrance and great hall, with a former dining room (now a pool) positioned to the rear. The four-storey accommodation was converted to houses in 1995–96. The long front and wings are punctuated by crow-stepped gables and bay windows. A projecting centre section rises two storeys with open arcading on the ground floor and the main hall above, featuring traceried windows and corner pinnacles. Behind this centre block stands a tall tower with an ornamental top stage, tracery openings, and corner pinnacles, topped by a pyramidal roof and fleche. The wings return at both ends in similar style, though they have been curtailed. Numerous rear extensions, greatly reduced in extent and remodelled in 1995–96, remain.

The entrance hall features stencilled decoration on walls and ceiling, with three Gothic arches in front of the staircase and corridors. The fine stone main stair branches into two flights, decorated with stencilling on walls and balustrade, and traceried windows with ornamental glass by Cottier and Co. The recreation hall on the first floor contains traceried windows and a dais at one end, sumptuously decorated throughout. It features a hammerbeam roof and linenfold wall panelling with stencilling, two-light traceried windows with glass by Cottier and Co., and walls painted with various figure scenes. Above the timber dado level are portraits on canvas by Ernest Girardot and others depicting various notables including Queen Victoria, Thomas and Jane Holloway, George Martin-Holloway, and Henry Driver, many of which are damaged and have been replaced.

Behind the staircase on the ground floor, the former dining hall retains a hammerbeam roof and stencilled decoration on walls and ceiling above dado level. Pastoral scenes painted on canvas by James Imrie and South Kensington students originally adorned the area above dado level but are mostly now lost. The stencilled decoration in the halls and on the staircase is predominantly by J Moyr Smith, executed in 1877–78. Other rooms in the main building are simpler in treatment, and the interior was extensively replanned by Charles Dorman in 1884–85. Later additions by R Weir Schultz and others have been mostly removed.

The Holloway Sanatorium represents the most elaborate and impressive Victorian lunatic asylum in England, distinguished by being the most lavish built for private patients. It retains much of its original character and detailing, with exceptional quality in the external design and decoration of the principal spaces. It is the only example of such a building to be listed at grade I. The building was financed entirely by Thomas Holloway (1800–83) and his trustees, who also constructed the nearby Royal Holloway College at Egham (1879–86), which survives and is also grade I.