Manor Park Hospital

Manor Park Hospital is a building located on Manor Road in Fishponds, Bristol, originally constructed around 1779. It has served various purposes over the years, starting as a prisoner of war camp, then becoming a workhouse in 1837, and has been a hospital since 1946. The structure is built of pennant rubble with limestone ashlar porches and exterior stacks, topped with an interlocking tile hipped roof. It features an axial, E-shaped plan and stands three storeys tall with a window arrangement of 5:9:3:9:5. The symmetrical front includes a central projecting block with three windows and T-shaped end wings with five windows each. A central 19th-century porch with columns supports a flat canopy, while 20th-century porches are present on the other ranges, except for the left-hand side. The side wings are distinguished by pairs of exterior decapitated stacks. To the left, there is a large five-window extension built between 1861 and 1865, which has semicircular ground-floor arches with chamfered surrounds, now glazed. The interior has been remodelled in the 20th century. Historically, the building was constructed by the Admiralty to house prisoners from conflicts with the American colonies and France from 1793, making it an early and significant example of its kind. It was later converted by the Poor Law Commission and functioned as a lunatic asylum starting in 1870.