Description

Robert A Bryden, 1901. I-plan cottage hospital in plain Tudor style consisting of central 2-storey gabled hospital block, flanked by symmetrical 7-bay, single storey glazed wings terminating in gabled ward block pavilions. Occupies prominent site to W of village facing main road. Squared and snecked sandstone with ashlar dressings; coped skews and skewputts. Mullioned and corniced canted windows. Central block with tripartite window with armorial plaque, lion finial at apex; breaking eaves gabled dormers to returns. Canted and corniced entrance porch in right re-entrant angle with plaque and shell crest flanked by cup finials to parapet. Pitched-roof multi-pane timber glazed wings with central French doors and dentiled timber detailing; fronted by low, balustraded walls with stepped entrances and square-plan, ball-finialled piers. 7 closely set windows to end elevations.

Predominantly timber sash and case windows with horns. Pitched roofs; grey Scottish slate. Diamond-shafted, wallhead and ridge chimneystacks; circular clay cans; terracotta ridge tiles. Cast-iron rain water goods.

Statement of Interest

The Elise Hospital for children, built during the later stages of the villages construction, occupies a prominent site facing the main road through the village. The building is a good example of an early Edwardian cottage hospital using a simple symmetrical plan form suggestive of A G Sydney Mitchell's approach to hospital design at Crichton Royal Infirmary in Dumfries and the Royal Victoria Hospital in Edinburgh Quarrier's Village is a purpose-built settlement founded by philanthropist William Quarrier in 1877 to accommodate orphaned and destitute children. He had operated orphanages in Glasgow since the early 1870s and was opposed to the institutional nature of the city poorhouses. Fortyfive 'cottage homes' were built between 1877 and 1910 on the ten acre site of Nittingshill Farm, bought at auction for £3560. Each employed a housemother who would look after groups of children in more familial and healthier environment than that of Glasgow's East End. The village also had its own school, church, post office, dairy, poultry farm, fire station, and workshops where the children were trained to a trade.

Robert Alexander Bryden was responsible for designing all the buildings on the site in association with Andrew Robertson, with each villa built to an individual specification. The late Victorian/Early Edwardian Free Style, making use of Baronial, Gothic and Tudor influences, is thought to have been inspired by the work of Richard Norman Shaw and William Eden Nesfield who pioneered the Garden Village movement in England.

The village as a whole is significant historically in terms of education and development of children in care, and remains generally well preserved with only a few of the buildings having been altered or extended. The historic core of the village has held Conservation Area status since 1985. The former hospital is currently owned by the Grand Lodge of Scotland in use as a retirement home (2006).

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q77779230

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Specifications for Building Conservation: Volume 1: External Structure: Practical Examples v. 2
• 
  Maintaining and Repairing Old Houses: A Guide to Conservation, Sustainability and Economy
• 
  Herefordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Northamptonshire: Buildings of England Series (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Wiltshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Suffolk: East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)