Laundry at the former King Edward VII Hospital

This building is a hospital laundry, dating to circa 1903, designed by Adams, Holden and Pearson as part of the King Edward VII tubercular sanatorium scheme. It is constructed in a Free Tudor style, using red brick with stone dressings, tile hanging to the gables, and a tiled roof with brick chimneystacks. The lower level of the building houses the engine and boiler room, taking advantage of the sloping site, while the laundry is situated on the upper level, accessible from the road. The building is one or two storeys high with attics, featuring four windows to the front and five to the side. Casement windows are fitted with leaded lights.

The front elevation, at the upper level, has a brick ground floor. The left side formerly had a five-mullioned casement window, with three of the mullions adapted to a later 20th-century opening. Two central mullioned windows remain as originally built, one including a doorcase. The right-hand window has been modified. There are two tile-hung gables, each with a three-light casement window, and a central mansard with a four-light window. A tall, square boiler chimney rises from the rear of the building, featuring a stone band that tapers towards the base. The left-side elevation is of two storeys, constructed in brick with five round-headed openings flanked by buttresses at the lower level, and five casement windows above. One tile-hung gable projects, featuring a canted bay window and a dormer window.

Historically, the laundry incorporated a carefully designed production process. Dirty linen was transported from the hospital via an underground subway, proceeding through the receiving room, wash-house, drying room, ironing room, airing room, and finally to the delivery room for sorting and return to the sanatorium. This process, and the building’s design, were described and illustrated in an article about the King Edward VII Sanatorium by the architect H P Adams, published in "Architectural Review" in 1906.