United Hospitals

Almshouses built 1860-1 by the architects Fulljames and Waller, commissioned by the Gloucester Municipal Charity Trustees. The building was created to house the United Hospitals, formed in 1861 following the amalgamation of three medieval hospitals: St Margaret, St Mary Magdalen, and St Kyneburgh. The site itself is historically significant, having previously been occupied by the Leprosy Hospital of St Margaret and St Sepulchre, founded before 1163.

The structure is executed in Picturesque Domestic Gothic style using red brick with decorative bands and relieving arches in white and blue bricks. Stone frames dress the doorways and windows, while plain tile roofs are topped with stone coped gables and gablets featuring stone kneelers and finials. The roofs are punctuated by tall brick ridge stacks and projecting stacks with single or double flues in various patterns.

The building comprises long, irregular ranges arranged on three sides of a large rectangular courtyard. The south side formerly had a range that has since been demolished. The dominant feature occupies approximately the centre of the north side: a large, square tower of three storeys crowned by a steeply pitched pyramidal roof with a lucarne on each face. A stair turret projects from the tower's southern side, and a cross-gabled range extends to its west.

The entrance front facing London Road features a continuous offset plinth with chamfered stone coping. On the tower front and the cross-gabled range, a decorative brick band at first-floor level frames diaper panels below the windows. A decorative brick frieze runs below the tower roof eaves. The tower displays a central canted bay window on two storeys with a lean-to roof; each floor contains timber-framed casements of three front lights and single sidelights with trefoiled heads. The third floor on each face has a central double casement. The gable-end wall of the adjoining cross-gabled range features stone-framed pointed-arched windows with circular lights in the head, set beneath relieving arches of alternating blue and white brick voussoirs.

West of the tower stands a single-storey range with two two-light windows of similar detail to those elsewhere, their heads within coped gablets. Further left is a two-storey tower with a pyramidal roof and lucarne on each face. Its ground floor contains a stone-framed doorway with moulded arch set in a gablet with finial; the first floor has a single light window. Next is a two-storey cross-gabled wall at the north end of the east range, with projecting stacks and two-light windows on each floor.

To the right of the central tower is a single-storey range with a central stone-framed doorway in a projection with the arch raised within a cross gablet. Two-light windows with trefoil heads and brick relieving arches in contrasting bricks set in cross gablets flank each end.

The north gable-end of the west range has a ground-floor three-light stone-framed window with Caernarvon arches in the head of each light, and a second-floor three-light window with trefoil arches and brick relieving arch as described.

The long west range of two storeys is flanked by short cross-gabled wings and features three tall, irregularly spaced chimney-stacks. The ground floor contains numerous two or three-light stone-framed windows; the first floor has similar windows, the taller two-light windows adjoining stacks with brick relieving arches set within cross gablets. The east range, also of two storeys, echoes these features and details.

Within the courtyard, single-storey verandas run along each side. The first floors of the east and west ranges have regularly spaced two-light windows with trefoil-arched lights raised in cross gablets, alternating with shorter two-light windows with flat heads.

The interior has not been inspected.