Royal Eye Infirmary

The Royal Eye Infirmary is an eye infirmary built in 1897 by architects Charles King and E.W. Lister. It features red brick construction with limestone dressings, including string courses, and has tiled hipped roofs with crested ridges and bracketed eaves. The two roofs over the taller towers flanking the entrance bay have half-conical fronts, and there are brick axial stacks with engaged shafts that become oversailing courses as cornices. The building has wide roof dormers at both the front and rear.

The structure is two storeys tall, plus an attic over a basement, and has a nearly symmetrical entrance front that remains unaltered. It includes projecting cross wings at both the far left and right, which flank similar cross wings that are slightly forward from the main range. The entrance features a central round-arched doorway of three orders, serving as a porch to a tripartite doorway with a pair of glazed doors set back inside. Above the doorway is a four-light moulded corbelled oriel.

Each tower has four windows per floor, including on the second floor above a bracketed string that continues as the eaves cornice. The remainder of the front has round-arched openings on the ground floor with tripartite or paired windows, while the first-floor windows have pediments on consoles and moulded sills on brackets, except for canted three-light oriels at the centre of each three-window range. The ground and first-floor front windows are sashes with glazing bars, with the meeting rails positioned behind transoms. The second-floor windows of the towers are also sashes with glazing bars, framed within moulded architraves.

The rear of the building has a one-four-one-three window range, featuring round-arched openings on the ground and first floors and tripartite windows in the three cross wings, with the centre one bowed and the end windows canted. All the windows are original sashes with glazing bars, except for the first floor of the central bay, which has a 20th-century window. The interior has not been inspected but may be of interest.