Prescribing big changes for city healthcare
NOW a landmark building in Gloucester’s Abbeymead, the origins of the Clock Tower apartment block date from 1883 when it opened as the administration section of the County Asylum.
The institution closed this week in 1994 and stood empty for some years before being almost destroyed by fire. Thankfully the fine Victorian building was rescued and given a new function.
Coney Hill was Gloucester’s second institution for patients with mental illness.
The first was Horton Road hospital, which was designed by William Stark.
This Scottish architect and planner also designed the Glasgow Lunatic Asylum, as such places were known in times gone by, as well as laying out the designs for Edinburgh’s New Town estate.
Both city hospitals became part of the National Health Service in the late 1940s, then in the early 1960s the grounds of Horton Road Hospital became the site of the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital we see today.
Horton Road Hospital closed in March 1988 and was converted into apartments in 2005.
The photo you see here of the old
Gloucester Royal Hospital was taken in 1983 shortly before it was demolished. As many will remember, it occupied the site in Southgate Street that was redeveloped for the Bank of England and is now called Southgate House.
Gloucester Infirmary, the austere, red brick building later called Gloucester Royal Hospital dated from 1755. It replaced a temporary infirmary which operated from the Crown and Sceptre inn in lower Westgate Street.
The necessary £6,200 was raised by public subscription and George II donated timber from the Forest of Dean, which was used in the construction. George III visited the hospital in 1788 during an extended stay sipping at the spa in Cheltenham.
Conditions at the hospital left much to be desired by present day standards. A report in 1790 pointed out that the poorest patients had to share two to a bed.
At around the same time the hospital advertised for an apothecary, the only qualification required being that the applicant must already have had smallpox.
In 1878 the infirmary took over the work of the Gloucestershire Eye Institution and was granted the new title of Gloucestershire Royal Infirmary and Eye Institution in 1909 following a visit by Edward VII.
The name changed yet again to Gloucester Royal Hospital in 1948 when the National Health Service was introduced.
In the 1960s the new tower block hospital rose in Great Western Road and from then the old Gloucester Royal building was gradually run down.
The wards closed in 1975, although the orthodontic and other out-patient departments remained at Southgate Street until about 1980. Four years later the venerable old building bit the dust.
A private mental hospital was operated at Barnwood House from 1860 with accommodation for 60 patients. This capacity was increased around the turn of the century when the house was rebuilt. Barnwood House hospital closed in 1968.
During the 19th century smallpox was a constant lurking threat in Gloucester and an outbreak in 1895 claimed almost 500 lives, the majority of them children.
There were isolation hospitals run by the corporation in the docks and Stroud Road, then in 1903 a new isolation hospital opened at Over.
On the land now occupied by Gambier Parry Gardens off Tewkesbury Road a children’s hospital opened in 1867. The hospital was run by Anglican nuns and treatment was free.
The establishment remained in operation until just after the Second World War and was pulled down in the late 1970s.