St. Josephs Orphanage/ Mount Street Hospital, Preston

History

St Joseph’s Orphanage was opened in 1872 on the site of an almshouse, and St Joseph’s Hospital for the Sick Poor followed five years later.

They were built by wealthy widow Maria Holland, who gave £10,000 at a time when Preston had one of the worst mortality rates in the country, because of poor housing and low-paid mill workers.

St Joseph’s Orphanage cared for 971 children before it closed in 1954.

Run by the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady Mother of Mercy, the orphanage was the first welfare provider for Roman Catholic girls in Preston, taking in up to 60 youngsters at a time in two dormitories.

After its closure, the top floor of the orphanage continued to serve as accommodation for the nuns who worked in St Joseph’s Hospital, known locally as Mount Street Hospital.

During the First and Second World Wars, they tended injured soldiers and, over the years, tens of thousands of babies were born at the hospital’s maternity unit.

Legendary performer George Formby died at the hospital following a heart attack on March 6, 1961.

The hospital closed when the last sisters left nursing in 1982. It became a private care home in 1988, which eventually closed down in 2003.

The site awaits planning permission for conversion in to apartments and gardens.

Source:

https://www.lep.co.uk/your-lancashire/preston/the-history-of-st-joseph-s-orphanage-in-preston-1-9250259

Esoteric Eric

Royal Hospital Haslar, G Block Padded Cell, Gosport

History

The Royal Hospital Haslar in Gosport, Hampshire, was one of several hospitals serving the Portsmouth Urban Area, but had previously been the country's foremost – and ultimately last – military hospital.

The Admiralty acquired the site selected for the hospital, Haslar Farm, whose name came from Anglo-Saxon Hæsel-ōra (English: Hazel Bank), in 1745. The building was designed by Theodore Jacobsen and construction of the main building was completed in on 23 October 1753. On completion it was the largest brick building in Europe. Building works cost more than £100,000, nearly double the cost of the Admiralty headquarters in London. In its early years it was known as the Royal Hospital Haslar.

Patients usually arrived by boat (it was not until 1795 that a bridge was built over Haslar Creek, providing a direct link to Gosport). Built on a peninsula, the guard towers, high brick walls, bars and railings throughout the site were all designed to stop patients, many of whom had been press ganged, from going absent without leave.

The hospital included an asylum for sailors with psychiatric disorders

All remaining medical facilities at the site were closed in 2009. After services were transferred to the Ministry of Defence Hospital Unit at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham, Portsmouth, the hospital closed in 2009. The 25-hectare hospital site was sold to developers for £3 million later that year.

Plans were released in 2014 for a £152 million redevelopment scheme involving housing, commercial space, a retirement home and a hotel. The hospital itself is a Grade II listed building.

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Hospital_Haslar

Esoteric Eric

Kingsway Tramway Subway, London

History

The Kingsway Tramway Subway is a cut-and-cover Grade II Listed tunnel in central London, built by the London County Council, and the only one of its kind in Britain. The decision in 1898 to clear slum districts in the Holborn area provided an opportunity to use the new streets for a tramway connecting the lines in the north and south. Following the pattern of tramways in New York (the Murray Hill Tunnel) and Boston (the MBTA Green Line), it was decided to build this as an underground connection.

Trams were abandoned in London on 5 July 1952, after which street tracks were lifted, but those in the subway mostly remain in place. In 1953, London Transport used the tramway to store 120 unused buses and coaches in case they were needed for the Coronation but proposals to convert the tramway subway to a car park or a film studio failed and it was leased out as a storage facility from October 1957.

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsway_tramway_subway

Esoteric Eric

Peggy Davies Ceramics/ Former Wellington County Infant's School, Stoke-on-Trent

History

The Wellington County Infant's School was built in 1893, becoming Hanley St. Luke's C of E Aided Primary School in 1982. The school closed in 2001, when a new extension was added to the adjacent junior school and was used by Peggy Davies Ceramics until 2010.

Source:

https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/peggy-davies-ceramics-formerly-st-lukes-wellington-county-infants-school-stoke-on-trent-october-2019.120525/

Esoteric Eric

King Edward VI Boys Grammar School, Stafford

History

The Free Grammar School of King Edward VI was first established in Stafford in 1550 to provide free education to young boys.

In 1862 a new building was erected for the school on Newport Road and would serve as the home of the boys' grammar school for over 100 years.

Stafford Girls' High School was established in 1907 as a grammar school for girls and was based at The Oval, just off the Lichfield Road, with some accommodation for students at The Hough Cottage (now at The Hough Retail Park). The school later moved to a new site off West Way, close to Stafford Castle; the modern home of King Edward VI High School.

In 1977 King Edward VI Grammar School and Stafford Girls' High School were amalgamated to create a comprehensive off West Way.

The old King Edward VI building on Newport Road remained in education hands and was turned over to Chetwynd Middle School before later becoming known as the Chetwynd Centre, home of the Stafford Collegiate, where many Post-16 subjects were taught as part of an agreement between the Stafford secondary schools and Stafford College of Further Education.

The old girls' school buildings on The Oval also remained in education hands, later becoming an art college before being converted into residential apartments.

Source:

https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/king-edward-vi-boys-grammar-school-stafford-october-2019.120777/

Esoteric Eric

Parliament House/ Former Royal High School, Scotland

History

The Royal High School was constructed between 1826 to 1829 on the south face of Calton Hill in Edinburgh, at a cost of £34,000. Of this £500 was given by King George IV ‘as a token of royal favour towards a School, which, as a royal foundation, had conferred for ages incalculable benefits on the community’. It was designed in a neo-classical Greek Doric style by Thomas Hamilton, who modelled the portico and Great Hall on the Hephaisteion of Athens.

After the Old Royal High School was vacated in 1968, the building became available and was refurbished to accommodate a new devolved legislature for Scotland. However, the 1979 devolution referendum failed to provide sufficient backing for a devolved assembly. Its debating chamber was later used for meetings of the Scottish Grand Committee, the committee of Members of Parliament in the United Kingdom House of Commons with constituencies in Scotland. Subsequently, the building has been used as offices for departments of Edinburgh City Council, including The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award unit and the Sports and Outdoor Education unit.

Source:

https://www.bcd-urbex.com/old-royal-high-school-new-parliament-house-edinburgh-scotland/

Esoteric Eric

Workshops for the Blind, Stoke-on-Trent

History

The building is built on the site of the former Rialto Pottery Works and is designed in the Art Deco style. The Workshops for the Blind were opened in October 1934 at a cost of of £30,000. For many years they supplied products to the pottery industry and by 2009 there were 44 employees. After a number of loss making years, the works were transferred from the City Council to a new owner and renamed 'Stoke Workshop for the Blind and Disabled'. In 2011 the business was closed, half of the workforce was made redundant and a new business relaunched at the same premises as 'Stoke Disabled Employment Ltd'. In 2018 proposals were made to develop the site in to 64 dwellings as part of a £8.9 million investment. The proposals suggest that the frontage of the building would be retained.

Source:

http://www.thepotteries.org/photo_wk/182.htm

Esoteric Eric

Price & Kensington Pottery, National Teapot Works, Stoke-on-Trent

History

Price's National Teapots (also known as Top Bridge Works) has been occupied by Price Brothers since the 1890s, becoming Price & Kensington after an amalgamation in 1962. Along with the Spode factory, the Top Bridge Works is the earliest surviving example of a fire proof pottery works. The main warehouse along the roadside and the one remaining bottle kiln are both listed buildings. Today part of the buildings are used by a mix of small businesses such as a gym, carwash and bric-a-brac shop.

Source:

https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/price-kensington-pottery-national-teapot-works-stoke-on-trent-august-2019.119432/

Esoteric Eric