Peter Coats Building, 31 Calside, Paisley, Paisley, Renfrewshire

Description

A 2-storey and attic, elaborately and extensively detailed, Scottish Renaissance, irregular T-plan former nurses' home of the Royal Alexandra Infirmary. The building dates from 1897-1900 and was extended in 1908 by the Paisley architect Thomas Graham Abercrombie. It was converted to private residences in 2005-6. The building is of snecked, stugged, red sandstone ashlar with polished margins and the majority of the windows have moulded architraves. The building has a base course, crowstepped gables, and there are dormers with piended roofs and others with semi-circular pediments which break though the eaves.

The main entrance elevation is at the south. There is a wide, round-arched entrance with a moulded architrave with a carved head as a keystone. This is flanked by a pair of drum towers with conical roofs which are linked by a balcony with a timber balustrade. There is an inscribed panel above, with some words visible including Nurses' Home, Peter Coats.

The south elevation of the eastern wing has a three-storey canted tower with an entrance at ground level and a corbelled 2nd floor. The eastern elevation has two advanced crowstepped gables, and the one to the left has a buttressed oriel window at first floor level. The gable to the right has a round tower in a re-entrant angle with a domed, finialled roof.

There is a mixture of timber sash and case windows, some with 6-pane over plate glass glazing pattern and some with plate glass glazing pattern. Other windows are casement windows with plate glass, or have small pane glazing patterns. There are green slates to the roof and there are a number of tall, deeply corniced chimney stacks.

Statement of Interest

The Peter Coats Building is the elaborately decorated former nurses' home of the former Royal Alexandra Infirmary in Paisley. It dates to 1897-1908 and is by the prolific and renowned local architect, Thomas Graham Abercrombie. The building is prominently sited within a mainly residential area of Paisley. The building has a wealth of architectural detail including crowstepped gables, a number of towers and turrets and a variety of windows. As part of the main former general hospital in Paisley, it is important in helping our understanding of the medical history of the town.

Age and Rarity

The Peter Coats Building was the nurses' home for the former Royal Alexandra Infirmary, which opened in 1900 as a general hospital with an infectious diseases ward. The Infirmary was designed by the Paisley architect Thomas Graham Abercrombie and it replaced an older building in the centre of the city. The site consisted of four buildings - the main infirmary, a nurses' home and a dispensary and lodge.

The hospital closed in 1986 when the new, current Royal Alexandra Hospital was built on a different site to the west. The former nurses' home was converted into flats in 2005-6 and renamed the Peter Coats Building. The former dispensary and lodge was converted into a children's nursery called The Nursery Times and is separately listed at category B (LB52439). The easternmost wing and the round ward of the main hospital building were converted into residential accommodation and renamed Alexandra Gate. The remainder of the main building is currently unused (2017). The former hospital is currently listed at category B (LB39057).

The history of the Royal Alexandra Infirmary goes back to 1786 when a general dispensary for the sick poor was opened in the centre of Paisley, offering outpatient medical treatment and advice. By 1805, this had become a House of Recovery for patients with infectious diseases, in an attempt to stop the spread of infection in the expanding industrial town. By 1850 the building had been enlarged and was a general hospital, called Paisley Infirmary and Dispensary. It had both medical and surgical wards. The hospital can be seen as a T-plan building on the 1st Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, with the dispensary, wards and matron's rooms clearly marked.

In 1886, with patient numbers increasing, the hospital committee decided to build a new, larger, building on a greener site, away from the centre of the city. This was to be a general infirmary that included infectious diseases accommodation. Subscriptions for the hospital raised £49000 and Peter Coats, a local industrialist and philanthropist, persuaded the committee to accept a plan for a 142 bed hospital.

The building was given to the local architect Thomas Graham Abercrombie to design and work began on the new hospital in 1894. The memorial stone was laid in 1897. The new hospital opened in 1900 and was called the Royal Alexandra Infirmary. It had three pavilions and an infectious diseases block. A chapel, which had seating for 100 was dedicated in 1901.

The accommodation for the nurses was originally to have been in attic rooms, but Peter Coats did not like this arrangement and in 1894 he advised that he would bear the cost of a separate nurses' home. Completed in 1896, this was the first part of the complex to be finished. It even had a photography dark room in the basement, as many of the nurses were interested in photography. The Ordnance Survey map, published in 1897 shows this first section of the home. The nurses' home was expanded in 1908 to 64 beds, again as a gift from Peter Coats, and the site also included two tennis courts which doubled as a skating pond in the winter.

The outpatient dispensary on Neilston Road was opened in 1902.

After the introduction of the NHS in 1948, the Board of Management wanted to replace the existing medical buildings in Paisley and bring all the medical services together. The New Royal Alexandra Hospital opened in 1986.

The modern general hospital had its origins in the 18th century. The first general hospital founded in Scotland was the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary which opened in 1729. Hospitals were thereafter founded in most large Scottish cities and towns and often built with symmetrical plans and to classical proportions. By the middle of the 19th century advances in medical knowledge and technology led to a clear shift to the pavilion-plan hospital with wards placed in block pavilions to help fight the spread of disease through cross-ventilated buildings. Hospital planning was not significantly changed again until further medical advances in bacterial control meant that ventilation was no longer a priority and other plan forms emerged. While technology played an important part in the design of hospitals, patronage and private endowment also led in some cases to elaborate architectural treatments which have provided us with some of our most important institutional buildings.

Purpose-built nurses' homes, providing separate, more secure accommodation for nurses began to be built in hospital complexes from around the 1880s. At the same time, training schools for nurses were being established, and both of these things helped to recruit a wider range of women wanting to enter the profession than had previously been the case. Prior to this, nurses' accommodation had been above the wards and often restricted to sleeping accommodation only and the profession was seen by many as something only those of dubious character entered.

Nurses' homes were built in Scotland at this time (the Glasgow Royal Infirmary opened one in 1886), but the Peter Coats building is amongst the earliest that survive. Others of a similar date include the former nurses' home at Gartloch Asylum in Glasgow (listed at category B, LB33868) and the nurses' home at Dykebar Hospital, listed at category B (LB38961) and also by Thomas Abercrombie.

The Peter Coats Building, which is the former nurses' home at the Royal Alexandra Infirmary one of the earliest surviving nurses' home in Scotland. It has a considerable amount of elaborate decorative detailing for this type of building.

Architectural or Historic Interest

Interior

The interior was not seen (2017).

Plan form

The plan form is irregular as a result of the two separate building periods. The Ordnance Survey map published in 1897 shows a roughly rectangular section. The 1913 Ordnance Survey map shows the extended home, with a section to the rear.

There was no standard plan for a nurses' home in the early 20th century, although many were rectangular in plan. The irregular T-plan of this one is of some interest in listing terms.

Technological excellence or innovation, material or design quality

Red sandstone was a typical building material for Paisley at this time and can be seen in other types of building across the city, including churches and tenement buildings.

The building has elaborate stonework detailing throughout. In the entrance elevation, it includes the round archway with the carved head, the twin drum towers, the variety of dormers and the crowsteps. There is decoration around the windows and the variety of window openings, including canted bays, bipartite windows and an oriel window adds to its interest. The different roof shapes, particularly of the towers, add to the richly detailed exterior. Whilst nurses' homes often had decorative and distinctive entrances, the amount of decorative detailing throughout the whole of the exterior of the Peter Coats Building is unusual.

Thomas Graham Abercrombie (1862-1926) was a prolific architect, whose work is found mainly in his home town of Paisley and the surrounding area. He designed around 130 buildings in Paisley, ranging from villas, tenements, shops, churches and large public buildings. He also designed Dykebar Hospital, a former asylum, in 1909-14 (LB38961). He used a variety of styles for his buildings, including Scots Baronial and Art Nouveau. Abercrombie was also a volunteer, first in the 2nd Renfrewshire Rifles and then in in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

Setting

The Peter Coats Building is set in a residential area of Paisley to the south of the city centre at an entrance to the former Royal Alexandra Infirmary. The distinctive crowstepped gables and the pair of drum towers to the south elevation make it a distinctive building in an area dominated mainly by housing.

The Peter Coats building is one of three buildings which constituted the former Royal Alexandra Infirmary. The building are all situated close to each other. The survival of this group is important as it helps our understanding of the buildings required for the provision of medical care in Paisley at the end of the 19th century. The former main hospital building and the dispensary and lodge are listed separately.

Regional variations

There are no known regional variations.

Close Historical Associations

There are no known associations with a person or event of national importance at present (2017).

Statutory address and listed building record revised in 2017. The Peter Coats Building was was previously listed as part of the Royal Alexandra Infirmary (LB39057) as 'Neilston Road, Royal Alexandra Infirmary'.

External Links

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.