(Former Extern Waiting Hall), Royal Victoria Hospital, Grosvenor Road, Belfast, Co Antrim BT12 6BA

Former Extern Waiting Hall, Royal Victoria Hospital

This attached symmetrical multi-bay hospital building was built around 1902 in red brick with sandstone dressings. It is rectangular on plan, facing north and positioned adjacent to the West Wing, with the Sir Ian Fraser Theatre connected to its southeast corner. The rear abuts the Old Corridor.

The building features pitched natural slate roofs with lead ridges and valleys, topped by several timber louvred lanterns with lead-lined domes and finials. Moulded cast-iron guttering is supported on a dentilated sandstone cornice at eaves level, discharging to cast-iron downpipes. The red brick walling is laid to Flemish bond with sandstone dressings. Windows are predominantly round-headed openings, with some original single-pane timber sash windows featuring ogee horns and moulded sandstone sills.

The principal north-facing elevation is symmetrical, centred on a double-height entrance bay that rises above roof level and is surmounted by a dressed sandstone crown cornice, slightly bellied to the centre and topped by a ball finial. A later entrance portico, dating from around 1980, abuts this central bay. Shallow projecting gables flank either end, with red brick and flush sandstone engaged pilasters supporting open-base dentilated pediments. The bay immediately east of the entrance features a Venetian window opening formed in ashlar sandstone with a central arched window supported on sandstone columns. The corresponding bay to the west has a single replacement round-arched window with newer brickwork and reconstituted stone cills, suggesting it originally contained a matching Venetian window. The outer gables formerly held large round-headed window openings with alternating bands of soldier-coursed brick and dressed sandstone heads; the eastern opening is now blind.

A single-storey abutment further east has a raised parapet and corner chimney, three bays wide with sandstone banding and engaged pilasters matching the adjoining structure. This abutment is asymmetrical, featuring two segmental-arched window openings to the left and a segmental-arched door to the right with an ornate sandstone aedicule; all openings are now blind on the north elevation. Behind the entrance bay sits a raised gable with a single oculus formed in brick headers with a scrolled keystone and compass-point blocks, containing a nine-pane timber window and matching dentilated verge detail.

The upper level of the entrance bay contains a segmental-arched window opening with stepped brick and sandstone headers over a tripartite sandstone window frame filled with Art Nouveau style leaded stained glass.

The east elevation comprises the return face of the single-storey abutment with sandstone banding, corner chimney, and engaged pilasters at the north end. The basement storey has a modern casement window adjacent to concrete external steps, with evidence of infilled openings around modern extract vent grilles. Beyond this bay is a later single-storey over basement block with square-headed openings to basement level, segmental-arched openings above, and timber cladding to the upper level. The southeast end is marked by the Sir Ian Fraser Theatre block, detailed with round-arched openings like the front gables, now blind, and engaged pilasters with sandstone banding on the exposed corner.

The rear south elevation abuts the Old Corridor as a series of flat and hipped roofs terminating beyond the east and west gables. The two-storey central section has a central camber-headed opening to the rear gable with a replacement timber casement window and a smaller vent above, featuring the same dentilated verge detail. The east and west gables have semi-circular windows.

The west elevation is largely enclosed by a recent modern building and features a bowed central bay. Windows to this elevation are predominantly replacement timber casements.

The building sits within the Royal Victoria Hospital grounds between a large modern block to the west and the Musgrave, East and West Wings to the east. A bituminous macadam parking area fronts the building, enclosed by a red brick wall along the boundary with Grosvenor Road.