St David's Hospital main building including walls to S gardens

St David's Hospital Main Building

This is the main building of the former Joint Counties Asylum, a massive complex of interlinked structures in rock-faced grey-brown stone with painted Bath stone dressings, slate roofs, and stone chimneys. The complex is predominantly three storeys high and mostly plain in style, though Italianate details are concentrated on the northern administration block and the pavilions of the cross wings.

The complex was organised around a functional plan. A very long south-facing front (actually south-east) overlooks the Towy valley and features a former superintendent's house at its centre, with ward blocks on either side. Ventilation towers stand at the intersections with cross ranges, which also contain wards. Behind the centre runs a broad double range containing the dining hall and kitchen court, leading to an entrance Italianate administration block that originally housed the first chapel. The eastern wards were designated for male patients and linked to north-east workshops, while the western wards were for female patients and linked to north-west laundries. Front walls on each side enclosed exercise grounds segregated by sex. Some subsequent modifications have altered this original scheme.

Throughout the building, windows sit in rusticated flush surrounds with keystones. Originally fitted with small-paned sash windows, most glazing has been replaced with 1930s metal casements. The design features a band over the ground floor, sill bands to upper floors, and hipped roofs with the long ranges broken by hipped projections.

The south front displays three storeys with a basement to the central block. The centrepiece is five bays wide, flanked by three-bay ranges. The five-window centre section has a steeply pitched bell-cast hipped roof flanked by large rendered stacks. The upper floors feature a tripartite central window; the first-floor window is crowned with a small pediment and a corniced porch supported by paired Doric columns and pilasters. The C20 double doors below have a plain moulded surround. Each three-window range to the sides has a lower hipped roof. The long sixteen-bay ward blocks flanking the centre are broken by a hipped three-bay projection near the centre, creating a 7-3-6-bay arrangement to left and a mirror image to the right, each with two large wall-face stacks. Twentieth-century stair towers occupy the inner angles. At each end, a two-storey cross wing runs forward with a corner porch at the angle, leading to a cross-gabled two-storey pavilion feature. These pavilions display Palladian windows on their first floors on three sides, canted bays to the ends, and two doors facing south.

At the intersections between the main block and crosswings stand prominent water towers. These feature steep pyramid roofs with small gabled vents, eaves cornices, and window dressings in brown terracotta. The upper stages have large paired windows divided by a column and set within big square-headed rusticated frames with corbelling beneath the head. Windows on the south-west tower are blocked; the north-east tower retains small-pane glazing. These towers appear in the original design but may have been added later, as they are constructed in Green Castle stone like the chapel and are shown in an 1874 engraving. Beyond each tower is a twentieth-century flat-roofed block.

The entrance block, screened behind the centre of the main range, accommodates the kitchen and dining hall. This entrance block is a three-storey hipped structure of 1-2-1 window bays, with the centre windows grouped as a triplet. The eaves feature a moulded cornice with a nogged lower course. The second floor displays arched windows with pilasters, moulded heads, and keystones, fitted with horned 12-pane sashes and fanlights with radiating bars. The first floor has square-headed hornless 12-pane sashes, with the central example of the group of three crowned by a cornice and centre pediment. The ground floor features 8-16-8-pane tripartite sashes flanking each side of a late-19th-century flat-roofed enclosed porch with parapet, built in Green Castle stone to match the chapel. Originally, an ornate corniced open porch with arches on Bath stone columns and pilasters occupied this position.

Projecting lower two-storey gabled flank blocks attach to the entrance block. These have Palladian sash windows to the first floor (8-16-8-pane with blank tympanum) and tripartite sashes below. The sides are two-storey but feature an attic gable in the south bay. A large octagonal former stores building is attached to the left wing, with a steep octagonal roof, triple windows to the north, a door with sidelights to the east, and single lights in the canted angles.

Behind the entrance block is a three-storey L-plan structure backing onto the kitchen court. An east range of single storey and a large west-facing dining hall with a steep half-hipped roof and large end-wall windows form part of this arrangement. A lean-to corridor runs along the west side of the dining hall, linking to the main block. A single-storey rubble-stone corridor crosses the service court to the north-west wing at right angles. A similar corridor serves the north-east wing, both corridors partly open and supported by iron columns attributed to T. Bright on the south.

The rear of the main range has a centre section of 4-5-4 windows beneath three hipped roofs, with long ward ranges extending to each side featuring hipped projections at the centre and each end. Windows occur in pairs or singly, mostly replaced with twentieth-century metal frames.

The north rear wings contain extensive two-storey and single-storey structures, some of which are additions as evidenced by changes in stone colour. The northernmost ranges are single-storey. The north-west single-storey range terminates with a double-gable marking the former laundry; the north-east range has a double-gable indicating the former workshops.

A link corridor on the west side carries over a service road on two segmental arches (the right arch is smaller, the left larger) to a two-storey west block. This former female hospital, dating from approximately 1898, features large sash windows in painted stone frames, a plinth course, and on the first floor a band and sill course. Three projections mark the front: the centre is hipped with canted angles and three closely set windows to the front, one to each canted side on each floor. The outer right gabled bay has two windows on each floor, while the left gable is blank, having been rebuilt following destruction of an attached wing by fire. Two windows on each floor sit between the centre and right projections, and one between centre and left. At the left end is a twentieth-century flat-roofed block, beyond which lies a further 19th-century wing running westward at right angles. The rear displays a gable to the left, a three-window range to the centre, and a wing running back to the right, terminating in the gable end of an east-west rear wing.

The south forecourt is bounded by damaged iron railings (listed separately). On each side of the forecourt, rubble-stone walls enclose airing courts. These walls feature some iron slag cappings, though these have been partly replaced in concrete.

Interiors have not been completely inspected. The entrance block has been thoroughly modernised. The former dining hall, now used as a staff canteen, has the feet of five timber roof trusses visible below a suspended ceiling.