Main Block, Elsie Inglis Memorial Hospital, Spring Gardens, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Edinburgh

Entry Name: Main Block, Elsie Inglis Memorial Hospital, Spring Gardens, Edinburgh

Listing Name: 100 Spring Gardens, Elsie Inglis Nursing Home (Former Elsie Inglis Memorial Hospital)

Listing Date: 8 February 1989

Category: C

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 371003

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB30198

Building Class: Cultural

ID on this website: 200371003

Location: Edinburgh

County: Edinburgh

Town: Edinburgh

Electoral Ward: Craigentinny/Duddingston

Traditional County: Midlothian

Tagged with: Hospital building

Description

H O Tarbolton, dated 1923. Asymmetrical, roughly butterfly-plan, 2 and 3-storey former maternity hospital, (currently nursing home, 2007) with varying roof levels. Harled, with some rock-faced coursed rubble to ground. Eaves course. Some cat-slide dormers.

Entrance elevation to NW with advanced, off centre double-height Gambrel-roofed entrance porch with round-arched entrance opening. 2-leaf timber entrance door with small round glass panels.

S elevation with advanced, flat-roofed rock-faced arcade to ground with terrace roof above.

Predominantly small-pane metal fixed and casement windows; some non-traditional materials. Variegated slates. Piended roofs.

INTERIOR: (seen 2007). Comprehensively modernised.

Statement of Interest

B Group with 1 Waverley Park and 94 and 96 Spring Gardens.

This is a distinctively designed, purpose-built former maternity hospital with considerable historical interest It was established as a memorial to Elsie Inglis, one of Edinburgh's best known medical women. The hospital derives some of its singular architectural style from Northern European sources, including the roofs of varying levels and the gambrel roof over the porch. It takes advantage of its position overlooking Salisbury Crags with a terrace to the South, built to encourage the patients to take advantage of the sunshine. Sunshine was thought at the time to be of particular benefit to patients. A memorial plaque in entrance hall displays, "I dressed their wounds. God healed them."

Born in India in 1864, Elsie Maud Inglis studied medicine at the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women. After qualifying, she worked in London and then returned to Scotland, opening a seven bed hospital and nursing home for women in George Square in 1899. In 1904, this moved to larger premises in the High Street changing its name to The Hospice and providing hospital accommodation for the poorest women of Edinburgh during their pregnancy. During WWI, Elsie Inglis worked in Europe, particularly in Serbia and Russia with The Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service, which she founded. She was taken ill whilst working in Russia in 1916 and died in November of that year. She is commemorated in Serbia and Montenegro at the huge Elsie Inglis Memorial Hospital for women and children in Belgrade, at Belgrade University and at Mladanovac where a fountain was erected.

The maternity hospital in Edinburgh was built as a memorial to her work and opened in July 1925 and closed in 1988. Also on the site is the brick built nurse's home and an outpatients' block (see separate listing).

H O Tarbolton (1869-1947) was born in Nottingham and worked in Edinburgh from the early 1890s. His work was primarily based in Edinburgh and the Lothians but he did work throughout Scotland and in Bermuda, where he had an office. His work included mostly public buildings and private houses. He worked early in his career with John Kinross.

List description revised as part of Edinburgh Holyrood Ward resurvey 2007-08.

Change of category from B to C(S) in 2008.

External Links

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