Graham House, Knockbracken Healthcare Park, Saintfield Road, Belfast, County Down, BT8 8BH

Graham House

Graham House is a former asylum building constructed around 1935–36 as part of the Purdysburn Villa Colony Asylum complex, now converted to office use within the Knockbracken Healthcare Park on the west side of Saintfield Road in the Castlereagh borough. It was designed by Tulloch and Fitzsimons, the architectural practice that had served the villa colony since its inception in 1902 under the earlier name of Graeme Watt and Tulloch. The building was also known as 'Grahamholm' and served as a new infirmary and reception block; it first appears on the seventh edition Ordnance Survey map of 1938. The contractor was Stewart and Partners, a firm that had also worked on the Stormont parliament buildings and the central telephone exchange in Cromac Street, Belfast. The estimated cost of the additions at the time was £112,000.

Architectural Overview

The building is symmetrical and comprises three and two storeys in red-brown stretcher-bonded brick on a brick plinth, with a corbel course between the ground and first floors. The overall plan follows the Corridor Plan arrangement commonly used in asylum design from the 1830s. It takes the form of an inverted T-shaped three-storey central administration block, flanked by two-storey cruciform side wings housing the male and female wards respectively. The wings are connected to the central block by single-storey linking bays. Each wing also has an additional subservient wing attached at a right angle to the north, returning towards the centre. The outer ends of the east–west sections of the wings are apsidal. A single-storey rectangular block abuts each wing to the rear, likewise connected by a single-storey linking bay. The intersecting bays on the north–south axis project to the ground floor on two sides at the south elevation.

Roof and External Materials

The roof is hipped and covered in natural slate with pierced terracotta ridge tiles and finials. The red-brick chimneystacks are buttressed to two sides with masonry offsets and carry terracotta pots on a masonry corniced plinth. Gables have raised masonry verges. Rainwater goods are cast-iron ogee gutters with cast-iron hoppers on projecting eaves. Ashlar blocks are used to the canted bays and door surround.

Principal Elevation

The principal elevation faces south. The central entrance bay is three windows wide and flanked by two slightly projecting pedimented gable bays, each featuring paired windows set within a full-height recessed central panel that rises from canted bay windows at ground floor level. At the centre of the ground floor is a six-panelled double-leaf timber door with fanlight, reached by six masonry steps and flanked by a window on each side. The door surround is neoclassical in style, comprising two wide pilasters surmounted by a moulded archivolt with label mould, keystone, and cornice. The second-floor windows to the gables have continuous sills and a masonry lintel, surmounted by a round-headed arch with keystone and basket-weave brick infill — though the left gable example is currently covered. The west gable has two windows to the ground and first floors and a window to the left at second-floor level. A recessed section to the left is six windows wide, with an irregular arrangement on the left-hand side. The exposed section of the north elevation has a single window at the left at second-floor level.

Other Elevations

The rear elevation has irregular fenestration and is abutted by a single-storey flat-roofed toilet block. This extension has a central half-panelled timber door with a transom light flanked by a window, reached by five semi-circular masonry steps. The east and west elevations are each five windows wide. The east gable has two windows at ground and first floor and a window to the right at second floor. The exposed north section has windows at first and second floor and a single-storey flat-roofed abutment at ground floor. The return or rear wing to the right has a variety of largely irregularly arranged fenestration: eight windows wide to the first floor; seven windows wide to the first floor and four windows wide to the ground floor. It is abutted to the far left by the single-storey corridor connecting to the side wing.

Windows

Throughout the building, windows are 6/6 timber-framed sliding sash set in camber-headed arches with projecting masonry sills, except where otherwise noted. Those to the ground floor of the main block are generally larger. A variety of metal-framed skylights also occur to the roof.

Wing Details

The east and west wings are each arranged on a cruciform plan. The outer ends of the east–west sections are apsidal. The southern arm of each wing is abutted by a later lean-to extension range of no architectural interest, embracing its south and west elevations. The west end of each wing, adjacent to the central block, is extended by a single bay at ground floor, surmounted at first floor by a lean-to conservatory that has been replaced in uPVC. The ground-floor section is fronted to the south by a demi-octagonal bay, glazed over a brick plinth with a half-pavilion roof. Each elevation of the wings is lit by an approximately uniform arrangement of windows to each floor and is otherwise plainly detailed.

Rear Rectangular Blocks

The single-storey rectangular blocks to the rear are asymmetrically arranged and are mirror images of each other. Each has a projecting gabled porch to the left of centre, with a pedimented gable containing a basket-weave brick inset matching that used on the principal elevation of the main block. Each porch has a double-leaf half-panelled timber door with transom light, reached via three masonry steps, and is flanked by a window on either side.

Interior

Despite a change of use and the subsequent loss of some interior detailing, the original floor plan is strongly indicative of the building's original function and allows it to retain much of its institutional character.

Historical Context

The Purdysburn Villa Colony Asylum has its origins in the purchase of the Purdysburn estate in 1894, when Belfast Corporation bought the house and demesne of 295 acres from the representatives of the late Narcissus and Emily Batt for £29,500, with the intention of using it as a lunatic asylum. Architects Jackson and Tilley adapted the house following a competition they won in 1897. In 1900, the Management Committee of the Lunatic Asylum, acting on the advice of their Medical Superintendent, Dr William Graham, resolved to develop the site on the Villa Colony principle, which would allow patients to be accommodated in homely villas and permit classification according to mental and physical condition. Messrs Graeme Watt and Tulloch of Belfast were appointed architects, though as work progressed the committee also drew on the expertise of G. T. Hine, architect to the English Lunacy Commissioners.

A dwelling already on the site, 'Glenavon', was adapted for 30 patients, and two further villas were built in 1902–03 for chronic cases. Two more villas were completed in 1906. In 1907 the Asylum Committee authorised plans for four additional villas, two churches, a recreation hall, and the hospital block. Work commenced in 1908, using patient labour to carry out considerable landscaping works. The estimated cost was £81,000, with contractors H and J Martin and Messrs Robert Corry Ltd. The 1901 land purchase of 295 acres was extended by a further 88 acres acquired from Mr John Morrow in 1902, with additional purchases in 1904, 1911, 1917, and 1919, bringing the total owned by the Corporation to 554 acres. Sixty-five acres were subsequently allocated to the City Council for an Infectious Diseases Hospital.

By the time of the 1911 census, five villas were occupied by patients — four newly built, each housing around 55 patients, and one adapted from a former house on the site, occupied by 33 patients. A further 171 patients were accommodated in the former Purdysburn House, indicating that the total number of patients had almost tripled since the 1901 census, driven largely by a more than fourfold increase in the number of female patients. Only male patients were housed in the villas; Purdysburn House became reserved for women. In 1911 Messrs Robert Corry Ltd were awarded a tender for two further villas at a cost of £9,790, and by 1913 these had been occupied by working patients transferred from Grosvenor Road Asylum.

Further building phases were planned in 1924–25, 1933–36, and 1938–39, all designed by Messrs Tulloch and Fitzsimons. It was during the 1933–36 phase that Graham House was constructed. By 1937 the site comprised 17 villas accommodating 1,320 patients, together with the hospital for 146 and a sanatorium for 22. Patient numbers peaked at over 1,800 in the mid-20th century but have since fallen to around 300, reflecting changes in mental health provision and a growing emphasis on community-based care. In the 1990s the site was renamed Knockbracken Healthcare Park to distance it from the negative associations attached to the Purdysburn name. Today the site is shared with around thirty voluntary organisations working in the healthcare field, and the headquarters of the Belfast Trust is also located there.

Significance and Setting

Graham House is a well-preserved example of asylum architecture based on a late Victorian design, with its original fenestration and doors largely intact and its linear corridor-plan floor form largely unchanged. As one of five asylum designs typical of the period, the corridor plan layout facilitated the segregation of the sexes and ease of communication throughout the building. The entire Knockbracken Healthcare Park complex is of interest as the earliest example of the colony model of asylum architecture in Ireland.

The building sits within a parkland setting of 275 acres that is largely unchanged from the early 20th century. The grounds are largely intact, with a lawn to the front, a tarmacked entrance and parking bays, and a large car park to the southwest. To the rear is a late 20th-century single-storey in-patients service block, which, while a later addition, itself illustrates the move away from the institutional style of hospital design in the latter part of the 20th century. There is considerable group value with a number of other buildings on the Knockbracken Healthcare Park site. Individually and as part of this group, Graham House is of significant architectural and historic interest, and is also of important social interest to the local community.