Royal Naval Hospital, Stonehouse
Royal Naval Hospital, Stonehouse
Royal Naval Hospital, Stonehouse Location within Devon
Coordinates	50°22′20″N 4°09′29″W / 50.3722°N 4.1580°W / 50.3722; -4.1580
Site history
Built	1758-1765
Built for	War Office
In use	1765-1995

The Royal Naval Hospital, Stonehouse was a medical facility for naval officers and other ranks at Stonehouse, Plymouth. It was opened in 1760,^[1] so becoming the second Royal Naval Hospital in Great Britain (after RNH Haslar, which had first received patients some seven years earlier).^[2] When in operation, it was officially known as Royal Hospital, Plymouth (or Royal Naval Hospital, Plymouth).^[3]

The hospital closed in 1995; it is now a gated residential complex called The Millfields.^[4] The site contains over 20 listed buildings and structures,^[5] the main Quadrangle being described as 'a complex of outstanding historical significance in the development of institutions for the care of the sick, which forms the principal part of a remarkable and complete military hospital'.^[6]

History[edit]

Overview[edit]

The hospital was built between 1758 and 1765 to a design by the little-known Alexander Rovehead.^[7] When first opened, it stood on the edge of Stonehouse Creek in relative isolation, close to the village of Stonehouse to the west of Plymouth.^[8] The site for the hospital was formerly known as the mill fields (after the nearby tide mills on the creek).^[9] Towards the end of the century, Stoke Military Hospital was built by the Army, facing the naval hospital directly across the creek.^[10]

Design[edit]

The design of Plymouth's Royal Naval Hospital was highly influential in its time^[11] (and has since been called 'revolutionary',^[12] 'pioneering' and 'of international importance').^[13] Its pattern of detached wards (arranged so as to maximise ventilation and minimise spread of infection) foreshadowed the 'pavilion' style of hospital building which was popularised by Florence Nightingale a century later.^[14] In the eighteenth century Plymouth's new hospital was highly praised by (among others) John Howard and Jacques-René Tenon, and it went on to have a direct influence on the conceptual design and building of hospitals in Britain and in France.^[12]

Layout[edit]

The hospital housed up to 1,200 patients in sixty wards. These were contained in ten three-storey ward blocks arranged around a square courtyard, along with a central block which contained a chapel, dispensary and staff accommodation. There were also four single-story blocks (which stood between the ward blocks on the north and south side of the quadrangle); in the 18th century these contained a kitchen and dining room, a victualling room, a smallpox ward and a storehouse). A Tuscan colonnade provided a continuous covered walkway around the edge of the quadrangle, linking the fifteen blocks. Until the mid-1790s there was no separate operating theatre in the hospitals; surgery was performed in the wards (much to the 'offence' of other patients, according to contemporary reports). Later, an operating room was set up in one of the four single-story blocks between the wards.^[2]

New patients usually arrived by boat, landing directly from Stonehouse Creek (which was infilled in the 1970s and is now playing fields); the remains of a jetty can still be seen, flanked by stone steps which formerly descended into the creek. From here an entrance arch led to receiving wards (with a bath room and a clothing store) where new arrivals were washed and provided with clean bedclothes.^[2]

West of the main quadrangle, facing the central block with its cupola, were a pair of gates flanked by lodges (which contained offices for the Agent^[15] and the Steward).^[16] Beyond these, Rovehead built a pedimented terrace of houses, providing accommodation for the four senior officers of the hospital (the surgeon, the physician, the steward and the agent),^[17] behind which were stables^[18] and houses for two clerks.^[19] Later, following the appointment of a Governor to the hospital in 1795, a pair of larger houses were built, facing each other either side of the terrace so as to create a smaller quadrangle;^[20] Directly opposite the water gate (with its jetty) was the main entrance from the street, which was flanked by a pair of lodges which provided accommodation for officers of the Royal Marine detachment which provided a guard for the Hospital;^[21] the Marines themselves were accommodated in a small barracks just outside the gate, similar in design to the nearby (and near-contemporary) Stonehouse Royal Marine Barracks.^[22] Later, police took over guard duty, and the barracks became a police station.^[2] A water tower on the edge of the site provided a pressured supply to the wards and to water closets around the site: an early example of a pressurised water sanitation system.^[23]

Later additions[edit]

In 1826 a burial ground was established on a parcel of land to the north-east of the hospital site, and a gate was opened in the boundary wall (by the water tower) to provide access; later a mortuary chapel was built, just inside the gate.^[9] A new hospital chapel was provided in 1883 with the dedication Church of the Good Shepherd, placed east of the main quadrangle on the main east-west axis.^[24] At around the same time, the wash house on the northern edge of the site was expanded to serve as a laundry, with the addition of a sizeable boiler house alongside. A significant expansion of facilities within the site took place from 1898-1906, with the addition of a sick officers' quarters beyond the chapel, staff quarters alongside it, a row of four zymotic ward blocks just north-east of the main quadrangle and a new dispensary (along with a house for the chief pharmacist) near the water gate.^[9] All these were built using distinctive yellow brick, which contrasts with the Plymouth limestone of the earlier buildings on the site.^[9]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Media related to Royal Naval Hospital, Plymouth at Wikimedia Commons