Administration Building, Knockbracken Healthcare Park, Saintfield Road, Belfast, County Down, BT8 8BH

Administration Building, Knockbracken Healthcare Park, Saintfield Road, Belfast

This is a substantial three-storey building in the neo-Baroque style, built around 1909 to designs by the architects Graeme Watt and Tulloch. It was originally constructed as a residential home for nurses and attendants at the Purdysburn Villa Colony Asylum, and now serves as an administration block within Knockbracken Healthcare Park. It forms part of a wider asylum complex of international significance in the history of mental health care, representing an early 20th-century philosophy of treatment supported by positive environmental conditions and thoughtful design. Having housed and employed many people from the local district for over a century, and remaining in continuous use throughout, the building is of considerable social importance.

Architectural Description

The building is of complex plan form. The principal element is a rectangular main block facing north, with a full-height return running to the south. A perpendicular former attendants' block abuts the south end of this return, along with a square block at the extreme south. The roofs are pitched and hipped, covered in natural slate with a mix of angled and crested ridge tiles. Tall red brick chimneystacks are capped in stone. Projecting moulded stone eaves support ogee-profile cast iron rainwater goods.

The walls are built in stretcher-bonded red brick over a plinth with chamfered sandstone dressings, with ashlar sandstone quoins and moulded sandstone stringcourses between each floor. On the principal elevations, windows are 6-over-6 timber sash, set within sandstone reveals with interlocking voussoirs. Each window has a slightly projecting apron below the sill, which has the effect of aligning the ground and first floor openings within a continuous vertical projection. All have moulded stone cills. The rear elevations are plainer, with 1-over-1 timber sash windows and some replacement uPVC windows, set in plain reveals with projecting sandstone cills, and with no ornamental detailing.

Principal North Elevation

The principal elevation is symmetrically arranged across nine bays. The end bays project slightly and are gabled, each one window wide, with canted bay windows at ground floor level. These canted bays have ashlar sandstone mullions and balustrade parapets. The top floor windows of the projecting bays are detailed to match the central window described below, and each projecting bay is also lit by an additional window to its inner cheek at the top floor.

The central section projects forward as a breakfront, rising to a segmental broken-bed pediment. This embraces the central second floor window, which has a lugged semi-circular headed architrave. On either side of the breakfront at second floor level, the windows are recessed within a balustraded gallery supported on sandstone columns; this gallery has been enclosed with modern glazing.

The principal entrance is set within a transomed and mullioned ashlar sandstone doorcase with multi-paned sidelights and a segmental mullioned transom. The whole is embraced by a deep moulded semi-circular canopy supported on paired oversized brackets. The door itself is panelled timber, reached by six stone steps enclosed on either side by brick dwarf walls with stone coping and ball finials. A disabled access ramp is provided to the right.

One small detail of note: a diminutive window at ground floor level on the left side of the main block has a curved black brick cill.

East and West Elevations

The east elevation of the main block has one window at each floor on the left side, and windows to the upper floors only on the right. The rear elevation at this point is abutted by the return and the attendants' accommodation, and has full-height sanitary outshots to either side, along with a modern lift shaft to the right.

The west elevation of the main block has three window openings at ground and first floor. At ground floor right there is a narrow four-panelled timber door with a brass knob, set within an ashlar architrave. There are two windows at second floor level. Several 1-over-1 timber sash windows are retained on the west elevations of the rear blocks.

Return and Rear Blocks

The full-height return has irregular fenestration, with up to four windows per floor, and is plainly detailed throughout. The rear blocks are similarly plain, with various single-storey projections abutting them. The re-entrant angle formed between the return and the perpendicular steward's wing has been filled in with a modern glazed dining room. This is enclosed to the west by a single-storey store with ventilation openings.

Setting

The building occupies a prominent position within the 275-acre Knockbracken Healthcare Park. It opens directly onto the main estate road and has a number of parking bays to the front, with grassed banks to the rear and on the adjacent ground.

Historical Context

The administration block was added to the Purdysburn site in 1909, during a phase of expansion between 1907 and 1912 that also saw the addition of further villas, a recreation hall, an infirmary, and churches. It first appears on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1920–21. The architects, Graeme Watt and Tulloch, had been architects to the villa colony since its inception in 1902 and worked under the guidance of the noted asylum architect G. T. Hine.

As described in the Belfast Book of 1929, the administration block — referred to as a "fine three-storey building" — contained the offices of the Medical Superintendent, William Graham, and the Secretary; the quarters of some of the principal Resident Officers; apartments for 50 per cent of the nursing staff; and their dining halls and kitchens.

Purdysburn represents what is considered the earliest and most fully realised example in Britain or Ireland of the "villa colony" model of asylum design, and is regarded as a landmark in the history of asylum architecture. The colony model can be seen in retrospect as both the culmination of a century-long evolution in asylum design and as a final expression of centralised mass treatment of the mentally ill. Few asylums on this scale were built after the opening decades of the 20th century, yet the flexibility of the villa colony model has allowed Purdysburn — now renamed and reduced in size — to continue providing mental health services to the present day.

The use of the term "colony" to describe a therapeutic community has a long history, traceable to at least the early 19th century. At Gheel in Belgium, a pilgrimage site for the sick and insane, visitors had boarded with local villagers since the Middle Ages, and this arrangement became known as a "family colony." However, it was not until the closing decades of the 19th century that medical authorities began to conceive of a colony model consisting of a collection of villas around central administration facilities. This approach was first widely practised in Germany and the United States.

In 1900, William Graham, Medical Superintendent of the Committee of Management of Purdysburn Lunatic Asylum — then housed in the former Purdysburn House — persuaded the committee to build their new city asylum on the villa colony principle. At that time, no such purpose-built colony for the insane existed in Britain or Ireland. Work began on the first two villas in 1902, to designs by Graeme Watt and Tulloch, and these were completed in 1904.

Meanwhile, London County Council had visited the United States to investigate the "cottage system" in Maryland and reported favourably on it in 1902, adopting a dispersed plan for their epileptic colony at Ewell, completed in 1903. Dispersed units were also added to the nearby lunatic asylum at Long Grove (1903–7), though the overall plan there remained largely formal and symmetrical. A dispersed plan was similarly adopted at some Poor Law "imbecile" colonies such as Monyhull Hall in Birmingham (1908) and Prudhoe near Newcastle (1913), but no other lunatic asylums appear to have been purpose-built as fully dispersed villa colonies until Shenley in Middlesex (1934–7), which was built around a pre-existing mansion. In this respect, Purdysburn was the architectural pioneer.

In 1906, Purdysburn was visited by the Royal Commission on the Care and Treatment of the Feeble-minded, who came to observe the villa system in operation. That same year, as two further villas neared completion, the Belfast Asylum Committee declared their intention to complete Purdysburn so as to accommodate the entire insane population of the city, and invited George T. Hine — architect to the English Lunacy Commissioners and described as "the most accomplished and successful of asylum architects" — to consult and advise the committee, the Medical Superintendent, and the architects on laying out the scheme on the villa colony system. Hine was a supporter of the colony idea, having encountered examples in Germany and the United States through the influence of psychiatrist T. Knowles Stansfield, and had incorporated dispersed units into his designs for Long Grove. His involvement at Purdysburn appears to have been largely conceptual: surviving drawings for the next phase of construction — comprising four further villas, the administration building, a recreation hall, and a hospital — are signed by Graeme Watt and Tulloch. However, an article in the Irish Builder of June 1908 suggests that Hine produced complete plans for the colony and intended to visit the site before work commenced. The total cost was estimated at £110,000, with the new accommodation intended to receive patients transferred from Grosvenor Road and Ballymena.

For Graham, the colony model offered clear advantages over earlier asylum design. The villas were intended to be homely, allowing patients to be socialised in a semi-domestic environment. They permitted classification of patients according to mental and physical condition. The rural setting was seen as beneficial at a time when mental problems were widely attributed to overwork in industrial environments. Productive physical labour was also considered important to recovery, and patients were set to work growing their own food — a strategy that benefitted both patients and the institution. Administrators valued the model's capacity for incremental expansion, with new villas added as needed with minimal disruption, at lower cost than a traditional asylum. Graham later stated: "This system, as everybody knows, or ought to know, is the fruit of the highest scientific study in the care of the insane, and springs from the two dominant principles of our time — exact and accurate knowledge and a love of humanity which counts no sacrifice too great for the sake of those who have been grievously handicapped in the race of life."

Protestant and Catholic churches were completed at Purdysburn in 1912, and further villas were added. That year the Lunacy Inspectors praised the "air of freedom and comfort and the pleasant and cheerful surroundings of Purdysburn," which were "highly conducive to the physical health of the patients as well as to their mental recovery," adding that "there could be no question that for healthfulness and comfort the buildings and site at Purdysburn were unsurpassed by any public asylum in the United Kingdom" — and that this had been achieved "at moderate cost."

By 1914, more than two-thirds of Belfast's mental patients were housed at Purdysburn. Dr Graham remarked at that time: "The change from the old to the new order...was not a mere bodily transference from one place to another. Indeed for many of them it must mean almost as if they took part in a transformation scene. No longer with visions contained in narrow limits, they can enjoy the ever shifting scenery of earth and sky, and experience the healing influences of nature...it is impossible to exaggerate the significance of the work as a historical contribution to asylum care and management."

William Graham died suddenly in November 1917, and his work was continued by his nephew, Dr S. J. Graham. In 1917 the original hospital building was extended. In 1927 three further villas, a gate lodge, and the Medical Superintendent's residence were added. In 1936 two further villas, an infirmary, and a reception block were completed as Belfast's continued growth placed sustained pressure on accommodation. The number of patients peaked at over 1,800 in the mid-1950s and now stands at around 300, reflecting changes in mental health provision and a greater emphasis on community-based care. The site is now shared with approximately thirty voluntary organisations working in the healthcare field.