Wonford Hospital

Wonford Hospital is a former private lunatic asylum dating from 1865 to 1869, designed by W F Cross, with a theatre and recreation hall added in 1912. The building is constructed of uncoursed stone with ashlar dressings, featuring slated roofs with stone coped gables and chimney stacks. It displays a Jacobean style, prominently featuring towers at the front angles, topped with conical roofs, dormers, and patterned cast iron balustrades.

The central administration block is flanked by wards, forming an open courtyard to the rear. A former detached chapel is now linked to the recreation hall and theatre. The building is predominantly three stories high. A sweeping stone staircase with open strapwork balustrades leads to the central entrance, which has a round-arched opening flanked by smaller windows and supported by pilasters with strapwork balustrades, featuring balls with obelisks. A canted bay window on the first floor is topped with a similar balustrade, above which is a clock set within a coped Flemish pediment flanked by chimneys. Windows throughout are stone with transom and mullions. The front range features alternating gabled bays.

The recreation hall and theatre are located at a first-floor level relative to the main building, with storerooms on the ground floor. The interior retains original features, including a recreation hall with a low vaulted ceiling and a theatre with large sash windows fitted with a proscenium arch featuring twinned pilasters supporting small pediments and a keystone. The ceiling of the theatre matches the hall and is finished with a decorative cornice. The chapel, designed in Early English style, comprises a four-bay nave, transepts, and an apsidal chancel. This element is also at a first-floor level, with an open arched ground floor beneath the apse and the west nave bay; the remainder of the ground floor consists of storerooms. Lancet windows are paired with trefoils set in roundels and separated by buttresses. The west end features a large rose window composed of four large and five small oculi. The chapel’s roof trusses are windbraced and supported by stiff-leaf brackets; the choir arch brackets carry angels beneath short columns with stiff-leaf capitals. The choir and apse have a timber ribbed vault.