Historic Building Details

HB Ref No:
HB26/43/005 A

Address :
Mater Hospital 45-51 Crumlin Road Belfast Co Antrim BT14 6AB

Townland:
Town Parks

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Survey 2:
B1

Date of Listing:
04/03/1988 00:00:00

Date of De-listing:

Current Use:
Hospital Building

Former Use
Hospital Building

Conservation Area:
No

Industrial Archaeology:
No

Vernacular:
No

Thatched:
No

Monument:
No

Derelict:
No

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OS Map No:
130-09

IG Ref:
J3314 7534

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Owner Category

Health Board

Exterior Description And Setting

Detached symmetrical multi-bay three-storey over partial basement range of red brick Tudoresque hospital buildings, built c.1900, to the designs of William J. Fennell. Laid out on a pavilion plan within its own grounds on the north side of Crumlin Road. Layout comprises a central block flanked by a pair of gabled wings and a further pair of advanced castellated blocks, all connected by a rear corridor with a central rear projection housing the chapel and a further rear projection to the east block. Pitched natural slate roofs to the central sections with roll-moulded terracotta ridge tiles and several profiled red brick chimneystacks with terracotta pots. Roofs set behind slightly raised gables with moulded limestone coping and decorative kneeler stones. Moulded steel guttering to moulded eaves course cast-iron and plastic downpipes. Machine-made red brick walling laid in Flemish bond with projecting red brick plinth course at basement level having chamfered limestone trim. Largely segmental-headed window openings formed in gauged brick with bowtel moulded surrounds, moulded limestone sills and uPVC windows. Symmetrical front elevation, four windows wide at second floor, comprising a central block with decorative gable, projecting limestone entrance porch and two-storey castellated bays set diagonally to either corner. Pair of single-bay three-storey wings flank the central section fronted by two-storey canted bays with set back connecting bays to either side. Multi-bay three-storey castellated advanced blocks flank the entire composition each framed by a pair of full-height advanced canted castellated towers. The central section has a decorative gable surmounted by a limestone cross and housing a trefoil canopied niche with a stone statue of Mary resting on a base supported on clustered colonettes and foliate corbelling and capital. Three-sided canted bay to the first floor formed in limestone ashlar with castellated red brick parapet and Gothic window openings with transoms and original leaded coloured glazing to the overlights. The bay window rests on a rectangular plan buttressed entrance porch with an elaborately carved tripartite limestone ashlar front and red brick cheeks. Three-centred compound moulded door opening flanked by pointed-headed cusped sidelights, splayed sills and replacement glazed door and glazing. Decoratively carved foliate spandrels over the entrance, framed by a continuous hood moulding and painted panel over with raised lettering stating; ‘MATER INFIRMORUM HOSPITAL’. Door opens onto replacement masonry-clad platform and flight of steps enclosed by low red brick raking wall with moulded limestone coping and terminated by a pair of limestone pedestals supporting decorative cast-iron lamps. The diagonal two-storey bay windows have slender three-centred arched window openings, paired to the front with continuous terracotta hood mouldings and surmounted by castellations. Set back between the central block and the gabled wings is a single-bay connecting wing, originally single-storey, infilled by a further two storeys c.1980. The gabled wings are abutted by two-storey canted bays with castellated parapets and transomed window openings formed in limestone with some original overlights remaining. Tripartite windows to the second floor and continuous terracotta hood mouldings throughout. The west wing has an ogee retaining wall enclosing the basement area. The advanced blocks have castellated parapets rising to a central gable surmounted by a limestone cross with a blind red brick roundel to each gable. All window openings have continuous terracotta hood mouldings spanning across the towers, with a concrete balcony spanning the space between the towers at first and second floors having decorative cast-iron bellied balustrades. Below the first floor balcony of the west block is a three-sided canted infill bay, with a later infill to the east block. Planar west side elevation to the west block with an advanced full-height single-bay gabled projection having limestone coping and cross. Plainer segmental-headed window openings to this elevation with sandstone sills and abutted by two chimneystacks. Multi-bay three-storey rear elevation abutted by later single-storey accretions and a four-storey modern terracotta-clad extension, built c.2010. The extension houses a full-height atrium with an elaborate Gothic stone doorcase repositioned from the rear of the chapel and inserted into a pre-fab wall. The chapel projects beyond the rear elevation surmounted by a further two storeys with tall square-headed windows having bipartite cusped windows with leaded coloured glazing. Multi-bay three-storey over basement east side elevation detailed as per west side elevation with an enclosed glass-clad walkway connecting the Dorrian to the MacCauley Building, c.1980. Setting: Located on the north side of Crumlin Road on its own grounds with a bitmac front area enclosed by low red brick wall with limestone coping and decorative wrought-iron railings with matching gates supported on elaborate limestone ashlar piers with Gothic carvings. Roof: Natural slate RWG: Cast-iron / plastic Walling: Red brick Windows: UPVC See surveyor’s comments.

Architects

Fennell, William J

Historical Information

The Mater Infirmorum Hospital was constructed in 1900 to designs by William John Fennell, the winner of a competition held in the 1890s. The pavilion design, where wards were contained in pavilions attached to the administrative core by corridors, was thought to inhibit the spread of disease. (Taylor) The building is arranged over three storeys and a basement, maximising the available space on its restricted urban site, a location which would not have been considered ideal in terms of hospital architecture of the period, but which was nonetheless very convenient both for the urban poor and the large workforce required. The ‘Hospital’ is first shown, captioned, on the fourth edition OS map of 1901-2 with the ‘Convent’ to the rear. The hospital was built by the Sisters of Mercy, the foundation stone of St Paul’s convent in the Crumlin Road having been laid on 25th January 1854 (Sister Mary Ignatius) The following year, in September or October 1855 the Sisters of Mercy laid the foundation stone of the Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Dublin, that was eventually to inspire a similar institution in Belfast. (www.dia.ie) The aims of the order included educating the poor, visiting the sick and attending to the physical and moral needs of destitute or distressed women. The buildings erected on the Crumlin Road site comprised a convent and schools (established 1859) described as ‘spacious, well-planned and architecturally handsome’. In 1859 the convent was still unfinished internally but comprised buildings arranged around a quadrangle comprising a hall, waiting rooms, sitting rooms for the advanced sisters, day rooms for the younger sisters, refectories, kitchens, cloisters, a reading-room/library, a chapel, sacristy and cells for each sister. The school building faced onto the road and its northern extremity was devoted to the ‘reception, residence and support of orphan children of the poor’ who lived there together with four daughters of Crimean soldiers who had fallen in the war. The school-rooms were at the southern end of the building and large numbers of children also attended as day pupils, sometimes up to 600 at both attendances (9am to 2.30pm and 7 to 830 pm. Some paid a penny a week but the poorer children paid nothing. The school was under the National Board and a small number of Protestant children also attended. (The Irish Jurist) The school was praised in the highest terms by an inspector of 1869 who said that the ‘pupils are docile orderly and affectionate and there is no school in my district where I feel more comfortable in the performance of my inspection duties’. (Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country) Heatley reports that the convent was still unfinished in 1862, and there were difficulties in paying for building work at this time. (Heatley) After the extension of the Industrial Schools Act to Ireland in 1868, an Act which was intended to provide for the care of neglected, orphaned and abandoned children the sisters founded an industrial school on the site which could accommodate 90 girls aged between 7 and 14. (Finnegan) A small grotto was erected in the grounds c1876 to implore for help in establishing a hospital for the poor of the city and the collections subsequently enabled local Bishop Dr Patrick Dorrian to purchase a private dwelling, Bedeque House, just outside the walls of the convent, to serve as the first hospital in the vicinity. A further £1,000 converted the building to a hospital of 34 beds and it was opened as the ‘Mater Infirmorum’ or Mother of the Sick in October 1883. (Casement; Belfast Newsletter) Casement’s history of the hospital carries a photograph of the former hospital building (now gone) , an extraordinary three-storey villa with a verandah spanning its width at ground floor level surmounted by an oriel at first floor level, said to have been built on a South American colonial model c1852 (Heatley). Although the quality of care provided by the hospital was high, the number of beds were inadequate for the local population. On Bishop Dorrian’s death in 1884 the hospital was handed over to trustees who carried forward his wish that it be enlarged to make it suitable for medical education. At this time, Catholics were forbidden to enter the Queen’s Colleges and therefore had to obtain their medical training in Dublin, a city thought to be fraught with moral dangers. Additionally, Belfast’s population explosion in the second half of the nineteenth century had left it very inadequately provided with hospital accommodation. (Casement) In September 1894 a building fund was inaugurated by a public meeting in St Mary’s Hall. A terrace of seven houses adjoining Bedeque House had been purchased as the site for the new hospital. The site was felt to be ‘one of the most healthy situations in the whole city; it was on an elevated site, and was clear from the smoke from the mills and factories that were to be found in other parts of the city’. (Belfast Newsletter) The plans of William John Fennell had been selected, from fourteen submitted, by Thomas Drew, president of the Institute of Irish Architects and it remained only to raise the funds in order for work to begin. (Belfast Newsletter) The hospital was constructed on the pavilion system, the object being to obtain an isolation of the wards, the centre being the administration block, flanked by a pavilion block on the east side for males and on the west side for females. They were originally connected to the administration block on the ground floor only. Each pavilion was to contain two large wards on each floor with corner towers providing the sanitary facilities. Verandahs were provided on the gable ends for the use of convalescents. Each pavilion had a wide staircase containing a hoist for removing patients too ill to sit or stand. One hundred and thirty seven beds were planned as well as eight cots for children. The Belfast Newsletter commented at the time, ‘Every care and every possible attention has been bestowed on these wards to bring them ‘up to date’ – in all the requirements of modern hospital planning, to render them bright and cheerful, well and thoroughly ventilated, and heated, as well as using every precaution to prevent accumulation of that dangerous agency of contagion – dust’. The ground floor was elevated allowing air to circulate under as well as around and over the buildings. The administration block contained nurses’ bed and day-rooms as well as ground floor reception rooms, offices and the rooms of resident medical officers. To the rear of the block was the chapel and branching off the rear of the administration block were single-storey rooms containing observation wards and recovery wards for use after operations. ‘Operating rooms’ were found to the rear of the chapel. To the north-west of the administration building were students rooms, a lecture theatre and a kitchen range which faced across a yard to the laundry range containing receiving-rooms, washrooms, drying rooms, disinfecting chambers, stores, ironing rooms and boiler and engine houses. On the west side of the yard was placed the stable, mortuary and post-mortem room. An out-patients or ‘exterior’ department occupied the front portion of the ground floor of the west pavilion and comprised a large waiting-room and three consulting-rooms with dressing-rooms off ‘to secure every privacy for patients’. The buildings were heated by steam and lighted by electricity. The administration block was to be slightly more ornamental than the pavilions with a statue of the Mater Infirmorum surmounting the entrance. The cost was estimated at £35,000. (Belfast Newsletter) Electric current was used to drive the laundry machinery, to work the hoists and to cook in the ward kitchens. A novel feature was the introduction of garden roofs over the pavilions (Larmour), a feature that was suggested by the Superioress. The roofs were constructed by the Vulcanite Roofing Company of Donegall Street and were tastefully laid out in grass plots and flower beds so that convalescent patients could breathe the pure air and enjoy the views or even play bowls or tennis. The hospital was to be fitted with NAP windows supplied by the Westminster firm. The revolutionary design meant that the outside of the windows could be cleaned from within and the sliding sashes could be fixed louvre style, increasing ventilation. (Belfast Newsletter) By September1895 some building work had taken place but it was not until 1st January 1896 that a contract was signed with the contractor Messrs Henry Laverty & Sons. (Belfast Newsletter) By 1896 plans were underway to build the Royal Victoria Hospital, foundations for which were laid in 1901 (Belfast Newsletter; www.dia.ie) and the building of both hospitals was covered enthusiastically by local press of all creeds. By 1897 the hospital was being called ‘one of the most scientifically planned and best equipped hospitals in the United Kingdom...The pavilion system of architectural construction...is A1 among the systems on which hospital buildings can be arranged. It secures direct ventilation through and through; it obviates the otherwise necessary ventilation by flues or shafts; it affords a better light and a purer atmosphere and renders possible a lightness of architectural construction, which in the new Mater Hospital is most agreeably apparent.’ (Belfast Newsletter) The opening ceremony took place on 23rd April 1900 and was performed by the Lord Mayor, Sir Robert McConnell and attended by such dignitaries as the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava and Gustav Wolff. (Belfast Newsletter) Valuation records of 1900 list the building at £1,450. The Mater was recognised as a teaching hospital by Queen’s University after the implementation of the Irish Universities Act of 1908 and links with the Royal were closely and happily maintained. (Casement) In the mid-1930s a new nurses’ home by Francis McArdle was completed and an extern department to designs by Young & Mackenzie. (www.dia.ie; Casement; Ulster Architect) A maternity wing was housed in a nearby terrace from 1945. (Casement) After 1948 the hospital was maintained by the efforts of the Young Philanthropists’ Association (YPs) who raised money initially through social events such as bands and concerts and later through the YP Pools. (Verzin) Costs having become ever more burdensome, in 1972 the hospital became integrated with the Health Service. A new nine-storey block was completed in 1989 containing Accident and Emergency, Outpatients, Radiology, an operating theatre suite and a 35-bed maternity unit. (Verzin) The block was designed by Kennedy Fitzgerald Associates and cost £9m. Todd Architects won a design competition to redevelop the Mater with a £13m budget in 1996 and as part of this process the convent to the rear was demolished in 1997 and replaced by a new main building, although the original convent entrance was retained. (Perspective) Two new wards costing £3.5m were opened in December 2004, the project entailing the alteration and refurbishment of the rear wing of the original hospital retaining exposed red brick. (Ulster Architect) Further refurbishment work has since taken place within the listed block. (Ulster Architect) References: Primary Sources 1. PRONI OS/6/1/61/4 – Fourth Edition OS Map 1901-2 2. PRONI OS/6/1/61/6 – Sixth Edition OS Map 1931 3. PRONI VAL/7/B/1/7 – Belfast Revaluation 1900 4. The Irish Jurist volume 11 1859 5. Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country Volume 80, 1869 6. Belfast Newsletter 25th September 1894 7. Belfast Newsletter 25th September 1895 8. Belfast Newsletter 3rd December 1895 9. Belfast Newsletter 12th September 1896 10. Belfast Newsletter 2nd November 1896 11. Belfast Newsletter 23rd November 1896 12. Belfast Newsletter 25th December 1897 13. Belfast Newsletter 24th April 1900 14. Ulster Architect Vol 6 Iss 8 p910,13 Mar/Apr 1990 15. Ulster Architect Vol 21 Iss 1 p52-55 Jan 2005 16. Perspective Vol 11 Iss 3 p68-75 May/June 2002 Secondary Sources 1. Casement, R S “History of the Mater Infirmorum Hospital” Lecture to Ulster Medical Society 31st October 1968 2. Finnegan, F ‘Do Penance Or Perish: Magdalen Asylums in Ireland’ Oxford University Press, 2001 3. Heatley, F “The Story of St Patrick’s Belfast, 1815-1977” 4. Larmour, P “Belfast, An Illustrated Architectural Guide” Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, 1987 5. Sister Mary Ignatius “The Wheel of Time: a brief survey of the ninety-six years’ work of the Sisters of Mercy in Victoria 1857-1953” Sisters of Mercy, 1954 6. Verzin, J A “The Mater Infirmorum Hospital” Ulster Medical Journal, Vol 56 Supplement pp S65-S71, August 1987 7. www.dia.ie – Dictionary of Irish Architects online

Criteria for Listing

Architectural Interest

A. Style B. Proportion C. Ornamentation D. Plan Form H-. Alterations detracting from building I. Quality and survival of Interior J. Setting

Historic Interest

V. Authorship X. Local Interest Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance

Evaluation

Detached symmetrical multi-bay three-storey over partial basement range of red brick Tudoresque hospital buildings, built c.1900, to the designs of William J. Fennell. Laid out on a pavilion plan within its own grounds on the north side of Crumlin Road. Layout comprises a central block flanked by a pair of gabled wings and a further pair of advanced castellated blocks, all connected by a rear corridor with a central rear projection housing the chapel and a further rear projection to the east block. In continuous use for over 110 years, this purpose-built hospital was at the forefront of hospital design at the time of construction. W.J. Fennell also designed the Maternity Hospital in Townsend Street Belfast (now demolished), and the Mater is a good example of his work while demonstrating his interest in patient welfare. In character the complex is a busy composition in a late Victorian idiom employing Tudor and Gothic devices that forms a group with the former Nurses Home (HB26/43/005B). Its public setting survives to a certain extent in that it still addresses the Crumlin Road behind its walls and railings.Although compromised by modern extensions and other buildings, the hospital remains a good example of the type and part of the history of medical care in the city and the province.

General Comments

HB ref amended to HB26/43/005A

Date of Survey

15 October 2012