Survey Data
Reg No
30334013
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Social
Original Use
Nurses' home
Date
1920 - 1940
Coordinates
186334, 230936
Date Recorded
03/09/2009
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Detached fifteen-bay three-storey E-plan former nurses' home, built c.1930, with three-bay central entrance breakfront, five-bay side elevations, three-bay single-storey blocks projecting from each end of front elevation, and canted projection to middle of rear elevation. Now disused. Flat roof with parapet over moulded cornice, and cast-iron rainwater goods. Decorative carved panels to parapet of rear middle projection. Wetdashed walls with moulded and smooth rendered impost course continuing to all elevations at ground floor level, and plinth course. Round-headed window openings to ground floor, set into recessed round-headed surrounds, with cut-stone sills and eight-over-eight pane timber sliding sash windows. Square-headed window openings elsewhere, tripartite to breakfront, with cut-stone sills and six-over-six pane timber sliding sash windows elsewhere. Twelve-over-sixteen pane window to second floor of canted projection. Square-headed window openings with steel casement windows and cut-stone sills to single-storey blocks. Round-headed carved limestone front entrance doorcase having keystone with human mask, rope moulding to surround of opening, plinths, and double-leaf timber panelled door with decorative fanlight. Site entrance comprising wrought-iron double-leaf gate with rendered piers, flanked by quadrant plinth walls with wrought-iron railings, in turn flanked by cut limestone piers. Wetdashed boundary walls with intermittent cut limestone piers. Located opposite Saint Brigid's Hospital on Church Street.
Appraisal
This former nursing home makes a notable contribution to Church Street. Although a twentieth-century building, classical form and detailing has been used, echoing the main hospital building across the street. It has well ordered façades, with a variety of window shapes and sizes arranged in a coherent fashion, all retaining their timber sash windows. The well carved entrance doorway with its human mask adds artistic interest. Its considerable size is an indication of the importance of the former asylum as an employer in the town throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.