Main Building at Rookwood Hospital

Main Building at Rookwood Hospital

The walls are faced with Radyr stone rubble with Bath limestone ashlar dressings, and the building has plain tile roofs. The structure consists of two main storeys throughout, though the later build sections are taller and incorporate hidden attics.

The south front features a large two-storey gabled porte-cochère added by Prichard in 1881. The ground floor is composed of stone arches supporting the first floor external wall. A bowed three-light mullion-and-transom oriel window occupies the first floor, with three carved stone panels beneath depicting a ship at sea, an 18-pounder being fired by a gun team, and the House of Commons—all three representing the work of Colonel Sir Edward Stock Hill, the contemporary owner of Rookwood. The arches have since been filled in to create entrance screens, and a single-storey wing is attached to the front, partly obscuring the carving of the arch supporters and stiff-leaf capitals. Octagonal turrets occupy either corner, each with louvred tops and pointed caps. Mullion-and-transom windows appear on either return. The gable is steeply pitched with coping and quatrefoils to both the parapets and gable. To the west of the porte-cochère stands a bay with an external chimney incorporating a coat-of-arms and two octagonal ashlar stacks above. The chimney is flanked on either side by two-light mullion-and-transom windows with trefoil-headed lights. The parapet features quatrefoil panelling. On the ground floor, a splayed four-light bay window in ashlar projects forward. At the west end is a splayed two-storey five-sided bay window with three transomed windows on the ground floor and three shorter transomed windows with trefoiled heads on the first floor. A band of panelling with leaf pattern runs below the eaves, with a hipped semi-octagonal roof rising to a peak. The west gable end features a small circular turret at the north corner, with a two-storey splayed bay with peaked roof to its north and a smaller turret to the rear corner, this one containing a dovehouse in the top. A modern hut replaces the original conservatory, obscuring the ground floor of this wing. It remains uncertain how much of this wing was added in 1881 and how much received new decorative treatment by Prichard; notably, the ground floor bay remains undecorated.

To the north is a long two-storey wing from 1866, featuring plain sash windows with plate glass and some bay windows. This continues northeastward as a very plain service range, leading finally to the Camellia House (now Medical Officers' Quarters), built against the east elevation by Prichard in 1881. This is a single-storey, L-shaped structure with a slate gabled roof, which replaces the original glazing on the south slope. The rear walls are of teak-grained brick. The apices of the south and east gable ends contain Gothic tracery with a band of floral mosaic panels below.

The south-east wing dates from 1866 and features windows with Caernarvon heads and plate glass sashes. This section has been reroofed and the main external stack truncated.

The staircase hall, accessed at resurvey, is located within the later southern part of the house. It features a staircase of polished wood of Gothic design with a panelled painted soffit. Similar painted panelling by J C Crace FSA decorates the ceiling of the staircase chamber and also the ceilings of the Chapel and Committee Room, though these latter spaces were not seen during the survey.