Building record MDR13137 - Royal Derby Hospital, Uttoxeter Road, Derby

In 1993 the Royal Commission on the Historic Monuments of England (RCHME) conducted a national survey of English hospitals of the period 1660-1948. The Derby City Hospital was included within this survey. It was built in the late 1920s as a civic hospital to replace the workhouse infirmary, to designs by T H Thorpe. The foundation stones were laid on June 29 1927 and the hospital was officially opened on November 16 1929. It was one of only three new hospitals built by a Board of Guardians between the wars, the other two being Manchester and Middlesex. A nurses' home, also designed by Thorpe, was opened in 1934. In 1935 tenders were invited for a mortuary designed by the borough architect, C H Aslin, and the following year tenders were invited for maternity receiving rooms. The layout of the hospital is shown on a plan of September 1931, when it included a Mortuary and Porter's Lodge, a small boiler house, Ward Block (East), a T-shaped Operating Block, Administration Block, Disinfector Block, Special Treatment Block, Ward Block (West) and Maternity Block. The proposed nurses' home and three further proposed ward blocks are shown as dotted lines. The RCHME survey noted "As with the majority of inter-war hospitals, a great emphasis was placed on open air and sunlight treatment. The most striking features of many new ward blocks were their capacious verandas and flat roofs. End bays of ward pavilions were sometimes partitioned off to create day-rooms or sun-rooms with access to verandas. Derby City General Hospital, built in 1926-9, was typical; it even provided shelters on flat roofs to allow convalescents and tuberculosis cases to benefit from plenty of fresh air... The range of facilities expanded greatly in the 1920s to include operating-theatre suites, X-ray equipment and a variety of specialist wards. At Derby City Hospital there was a detached maternity block and a special treatment block housing the X-ray department, an ophthalmic ward, dental room, and wards for massage and sun treatment." Prior to proposed redevelopment of the hospital complex, part of which would see the piecemeal replacement of the original hospital buildings, a buildings and archive appraisal was carried out in 2002. This included a rapid photographic survey of the exterior of the buildings and a rapid assessment of the fabric. It noted a series of aerial photographs showing the hospital at various stages. The earliest photograph shows the oldest buildings, which include the main H-shaped part of the hospital completed by 1929; the nurses' home to the southwest had been built by 1937; various smaller buildings and add-ons had been built by 1949; the buildings on the western side of the site were built by 1974; the Uttoxeter road widening and roundabout was completed by 1975 and a small number of other buildings were built at the hospital; by 1992 the large building in the southern part of the site, which includes the Maternity and Children's Wards, had been built. (1)