Healthful Classicism
The Defence and National Rehabilitation Centre, Nottinghamshire
The new Defence and National Rehabilitation Centre in Nottinghamshire is set to transform the lives of wounded servicemen and women, reveals Clive Aslet
A new clinical rehabiltation unit in the Classical style, financed through private philanthropy, is opening. It aims to bring the lessons learnt through the care of service personnel to the NHS. Clive Aslet reports
The new Defence and National Rehabilitation Centre (DNRC), on the Stanford hall estate outside Loughborough in Nottinghamshire, is remarkable on many levels. Medically, it represents an outstanding resource to help wounded servicemen and women recover from their injuries and trauma, some of which are horrific. It has been built without a penny of Government money, following the generous support of the late Duke of Westminster and others.
The Armed Forces, it should be said, have an outstanding record in putting wounded service personnel back, quite literally in some cases, on their feet; its success rate, due to the discipline of military life and the can-do attitude of the individuals concerned, far outstrips that of the NHS, when helping patients recover from peacetime accidents.
There is the opportunity in due course for the clinical expertise and the state-of-theart equipment in the new DNRC to be shared with the NHS in the form of a civilian facility close by on the same estate, hence the reference to ‘National’ in the title.
The architecture is no less exceptional. From the start, it was agreed that this should contribute towards the recuperative process. Patients would, it was believed, thrive best in an atmosphere of ordered calm and familiarity.
The Duke was firm in his belief that this could only be achieved through Classicism. This was not simply a matter of personal conviction, although that played a part; it was felt that a Classical scheme would unconsciously evoke a tradition of military architecture with which the patients would be instinctively comfortable.
Obvious precedents, in terms of hospital architecture, are the Royal hospital at Chelsea and the Dreadnought Seamen’s hospital at Greenwich. To these can be added the many barracks, forts and ordnance depots that, until the mid 20th century, were nearly always in a Classical idiom. Often, like the Royal hospital itself, they were also brick and brick is the Midlands material par
excellence (seen, for example, in the Royal Ordnance Depot of the Napoleonic era at Weedon Bec, near Daventry).
What we have, therefore, is both a public building in a Classical style—probably the first for half a century—and the greatest extent of brickwork laid in one project since the Second World War (Fig 1).
The Forces’ previous Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre was at headley Court in Surrey. This had been bought after the Second World War by the Royal Air Force Pilots and Crews Fund, from money raised as a tribute to the airmen who had fought in the Battle of Britain.
As many RAF officers came from the home Counties, the location was ideal for the purpose. however, recent wars have not seen so many injuries to pilots; instead, in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was the infantry that bore the brunt of roadside bombs and sniper fire.
A facility in the South-east was not ideal for patients whose families often lived
It was agreed the architecture should contribute to patients’ recuperation
in the north of England or Scotland, besides which, the grounds of Headley Court were too cramped for the necessary expansion. Thus, it was decided to find a new site in the centre of the country, although one that would still have, at its heart, a country house. The search began in 2009.
The choice fell on Stanford Hall. In origin, Stanford Hall was a 17th-century house, illustrated in the fourth volume (Badeslade and Rocque) of Vitruvius Britannicus (1739). The plate shows a stone house of seven bays, with two lower wings, standing behind some simplified parterres. The park is handsomely wooded and planted with avenues.
From 1771–74, this building was replaced by the local architect William Anderson (otherwise Henderson) for a member of the Dashwood family; the old house was partly demolished and encased in a brick structure, with a restrained neo-classical skin. A canted bay in the manner of Sir Robert Taylor survives on the south side.
At the end of the 19th century, the estate passed into the hands of Richard Ratcliffe, a brewer from Burton-on-trent, who remodelled and enlarged the house, building a new wing. This was done in an insipid neoGeorgian style, which contemporaries would have called ‘Adams’.
Insipid is not a word that could be applied to Sir Julien Cahn, Stanford Hall’s owner from 1928. Of German-jewish descent, Cahn had made a fortune from selling furniture
on hire purchase. He was also a philanthropist (for which he was knighted, becoming eventually a baronet) and sportsman. As the owner of an estate in the Shires, he became, for a few seasons, a master of foxhounds, ‘one of the few Jews—possibly the only one’, according to The Palgrave Dictionary of
Anglo-jewish History, to do so at the time. However, he was not a hard rider. A groom carrying an axe would accompany him when he went out with his packs, the Woodland Pytchley, Fernie and Burton, to demolish obstacles that proved fearsome. He also had the job of jumping Cahn’s horse over ditches, after which, its owner would remount and continue the Chase. After only an hour in the field, Cahn would retire to the back of his
Rolls-royce to eat a large luncheon, ending with his favourite pudding of orange soufflé.
Cricket was more to his taste. The Sir Julien Cahn XI toured the world. Accommodation for two complete teams plus umpires was added to Stanford Hall so that Cahn could stage his own five-day matches.
This was provided above a superb 352seat Art Deco theatre, whose safety curtain (removed because of asbestos) was decorated with an enlarged version of the Vitru
vius Britannicus engraving. The Wurlitzer organ, which rises from the ground, still works; at one memorable early meeting of the Thirties Society (now the Twentieth Century Society), it was played by the late Prof David Watkin.
As well as a swimming pool, created out of the old reservoir, the grounds contain a sea-lion pool (the sea lions were given as a birthday present by Cahn’s wife, Phyllis), a penguin pool and a flamingo pool. The lidostyle diving boards from the swimming pool are still in one of the courtyards of the DNRC.
The prodigality of Cahn’s work, mostly designed by the fashionable architect/ decorator White Allom, was unusual, given the grim mood of the 1930s. Cahn’s response to the gathering storm was to have a bomb shelter constructed. With his death in 1944, the party, for Stanford Hall, came to an end.
In 1945, the house became a college for the Co-operative Union. By 2008, it was owned by a developer who intended to make it the centre of a retirement village, but these plans were unravelled by the financial crisis.
Although the house has changed over the years, the landscape remains that of an 18thcentury park (Fig 3). This was, from the start, central to the project. Built at the top of the rise, the bedroom wards open out towards it, allowing patients to enjoy peaceful vistas.
The house itself was both an inspiration and a challenge. Clearly, a Grade Ii*-listed building was not suited to intensive clinical use; it would have been difficult to adapt in ways that were sensitive to its character or did not impose constraints on the medical work.
On the other hand, a country house with the usual ancillary buildings provides a good model on which to organise a complex project
such as the DNRC. With varied clinical and sports facilities needing to be housed (Fig 6), together with messes, bars and several types of accommodation, the brief was vast; it required some 430,560sq ft of new floor space.
By breaking the requirements down into component parts, the architect responsible, John Simpson, preserved the human scale. This makes the DNRC feel friendly, rather than threatening. As Mr Simpson comments: ‘Size alone, if inappropriately handled, could hinder achieving a scale for the development that is sufficiently humane for patients to relate to without it becoming overwhelmingly institutional in character.’ He had admired monastic hospitals such as Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, where the scale of the building is only apparent once you’re inside.
This Picturesque approach also provides maximum flexibility, allowing more space to be added piecemeal, as and when needed. This is an important requirement for the military: who can predict what shape future wars will take and the types of injury they will inflict? Or when technology will evolve to provide new treatments, requiring their own spaces in due course?
Mr Simpson reserved the house and its environs for research facilities, staff messes and administration; people from outside the DNRC can visit them without causing disruption.
The house is now framed by two new blocks, which disguise its length, increased by the addition of a new wing to balance the large one containing the theatre. The ends of these blocks have Diocletian windows to the upper floor, but the windows of the long façades are set in recessed arcades. This introduces the theme of brick architecture, somewhat sober in character: comparisons could be made both with other military and Georgian hospitals, such as Guy’s.
At the DNRC, the severity is leavened by the rosy colour. Elsewhere, important units are distinguished by being built of yellow brick: this adds variation, but was also a necessary response to obtaining enough brick, given the very large demand made by this project.
The rehabilitation facilities are organised around courtyards, reached by archways and paths. From the house, the principal gateway lies through a building that replaced the coach house (Fig 7). This has a pediment and bell turret, with sides faced with a cast-iron in memory of its former equestrian occupants; the cast iron is painted in a shade of duckegg blue that has become the estate colour.
The main courtyard is surrounded by cloisters on three sides (Fig 5); the fourth, containing the main swimming pool, is dominated by a giant figure of Maj-gen Sir Robert Jones, sculpted by Sandy Stoddart
(Fig 2). As an explanatory text describes, he was director of Military Orthopaedics in the First World War and ‘the father of rehabilitation medicine as we know it today’.
The landscaping of the court comprises raised beds around which there are paths, laid with bricks, uneven concrete, pebbles and so on—the different surfaces are to allow patients to practise the use of prosthetic limbs (Fig 4). Elsewhere, courtyard gardens
have been designed with steps of varying heights for the same purpose.
As a medical facility, says Mr Simpson, ‘the DNRC is unique’. For the medical and technical aspects, he worked with Steffian Bradley Architects, which has wide experience of the medical field and with Arup engineers.
Among the equipment that has been accommodated is a gait laboratory, where the way a person walks can be precisely analysed, and a Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment (CAREN), which simulates many different kinds of environments, enabling patients who have been fitted with prosthetic limbs to relearn old skills, including skiing and mountaineering.
The DNRC not only fits prosthetic limbs, but has a workshop where they can be made and adjusted. Other specialist equipment is found on the complex trauma wards, the neuro-treatment wing and the outpatient department. A run of ‘back to life’ cottages enables patients to master everyday chores before the time comes to leave the DNRC for the outside world.
Throughout the estate are pavilions and incidental buildings—such as the old game larder, lovingly moved to a new location— which add interest for the patients. Even the bats have been thought of. Two handsome wooden bat houses, complete with their own heating systems, have been built, at considerable expense, to rehouse bats dispossessed by the building work; at time of writing, the first winged residents had just moved in.