Hippolyte J Blanc, circa 1906. 2 storey red brick built dwelling on L-shaped plan. Pitched slated roof with red clay ridge and stone skews. Gable end chimney stacks with pots. Upper windows have unusual shallow dormer heads. Small offshoot single-storey extension.
Constructed as the engineer's house (for the power complex to the immediate West) to Bangour Village Hospital. Bangour Village Hospital is the best surviving example in Scotland of a psychiatric hospital created in the village system of patient care, a revolutionary concept in the late 19th century.
The hospital was built by the well-known Edinburgh architect Hippolyte J. Blanc as a result of a competition begun in 1898 and is the first of the new thinking in psychiatric provision to be conceived in Scotland. The Edinburgh Lunacy Board had concluded that a new psychiatric hospital was required to cater for the increasing numbers of patients from Edinburgh and the hospital was opened in 1906. The hospital was commissioned by the War Office in WWI and WWII for wounded soldiers and extra temporary structures were erected, most of which were dismantled after the War although some timber ones were retained by the hospital. Many more built during WWII were erected to the NW of the site and this became the basis of the Bangour General Hospital (now demolished). Bangour Village Hospital continued as a psychiatric hospital until 2004.
Hippolyte Blanc (1844-1917) was an eminent and prolific Edinburgh-based architect who was perhaps best known for his Gothic revival churches. He was also a keen antiquarian and many of his buildings evoke an earlier Scottish style.
Loading contexts...
