Leigh Court Hospital

Leigh Court Hospital is a country house dating from 1814, designed by Thomas Hopper for Philip Miles of Bristol. It is constructed of ashlar with a hipped slate roof and prominent ashlar stacks. The building is executed in a severe Greek Revival style.

The south-east and north-west elevations possess a symmetrical design, each featuring three bays and incorporating a detached portico of four giant, unfluted Ionic columns, a plain entablature, and a pediment. Glazing bar sash windows are set in plain reveals, with glazed central doors. The north-east elevation exhibits seven bays, with the central bays recessed behind four Ionic columns in antis. This elevation features French windows on the ground floor, glazing bar sash windows above, and a 20th-century fire escape on the right side. The outer bays contain tripartite windows, with the outer lights being blank and recessed within a segmental headed niche. Attached service wings extend to the south-west, featuring nine bays of glazing bar sash windows. The south-west end has a 2:1:2 bay arrangement, marked by end Ionic pilasters, with a segmental headed window and doorway leading to a central passageway in the central bay.

The interior exhibits a high level of elaborate decoration, including Grecian-style plasterwork of exceptional quality. The entrance hall is a square room with a central ring of eight marble Ionic columns supporting a saucer dome. The room includes decorative anthemion friezes and a stone and marble patterned floor. The staircase hall is a long, oblong room with two flights of cantilevered stone stairs rising on either side to meet on the first floor. Elaborate iron balustrades feature a brass inlaid handrail, while galleries at first floor level are supported by Ionic columns. The ceiling is coved and coffered, with tinted glazing, and a decorative anthemion frieze. A Vitruvian scroll decorates the frieze below the galleries. A Flight and Robson organ from 1814 occupies the north-west end, incorporating a barrel and two banks of pipes joined by a frieze, showcasing free Greek Revival detailing. Panelled doors are present throughout, all with brass door furniture. A staff dining room or morning room, located in the east corner, showcases a late 19th-century Adam/Wyatt style with an enriched plaster ceiling and frieze, along with a fireplace flanked by paired Corinthian columns. A patients sitting room or library features a flat coffered ceiling with an elaborate frieze and cornice. The tapestry or drawing room, in the north corner, boasts a highly elaborate ceiling with a central round panel flanked by rectangular panels, elaborate gilded plasterwork, and highly decorative architraves around doors and windows. A room on the centre of the north-west side retains a fine geometrical pattern parquetry floor, a decorative ceiling with a large circular centre, and elaborate friezes and architraves, along with an original square brass chandelier or gasolier with etched glass. The school room, in the west corner and also a dining room, has a rectangular ceiling decorated with vine leaves and grapes, a figure frieze, and a large marble fireplace with guilloche moulding and animal heads and claws decorating the piers.