Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast - History

History

Completed in 1906, the Royal Victoria Hospital is a landmark in building engineering which claims to be the first air-conditioned public building in the world. Belfast's Sirocco Works factory pioneered the development of air conditioning.

The original hospital was designed in 1899 by architects Henman and Cooper of Birmingham. It culminated preparations dating from the mid-1890s to modernise hospital design, with special regard to advances in antiseptic treatment in surgery and the application of plenum ventilation. Notable elements of the original hospital design were in layout and technology. The hospital was built at a time in the UK when there was concern (during a period of relative social responsibility) for having sufficient hospital treatment facilities in (or close to) city centres, when it was recognised there was little available space for expanding existing hospitals or building new institutions.

The Royal Victoria Hospital's design paid less attention to the usual requirements of hospital sites for access to sunshine and fresh air, and traditional pavilion-style hospital design was forsaken. Wards were placed compactly side-by-side, on one level, wall-to-wall, without intervening opening spaces. There were many long, communal wards with large windows at each end, with clerestory windows also providing daylight. Balconies (small for the ward size) were placed at the end of long wards, and there were some accessible outdoor areas. The outdoor access, however, had no integral relationship to the design of the hospital buildings; as the hospital grew, the exterior area available for patients diminished. Today, this area has almost entirely been taken up by roads within the site and parking areas. For ambulatory patients, tiny Dunville Park lies beside the hospital; however, it is unsheltered from traffic noise. Close city-hospital accommodation (with little open space) was not unique in Europe or the British Isles at that time, although it ran counter to the trend of the times.

The design of the Royal Victoria Hospital reacted against that trend at a time when cities were expanding rapidly. Many city hospitals in the UK today differ from those of the Victorian era, in which outdoor access was seen as important for recuperation. (Notably, there has not been any clearly identifiable trend nationally to develop hospitals including open space since that time.) The fresh-air supply in the original R.V.H. was based on the plenum principle (an example of which is the space above a dropped ceiling), which helped control relative humidity.

The Royal Victoria Hospital and its subsidiary hospitals became the Royal Group of Hospitals (or The Royal Hospitals). The Royal Hospitals site has developed over the years to occupy a large area in west Belfast, a walkable distance from the city centre. Most of this site is occupied by the Royal Victoria Hospital itself. The site consists of the original Victorian buildings (some visible from Grosvenor Road) and later, less architecturally-distinguished buildings. The original Victorian designs are a partial adaptation of the English Renaissance style. The material of the original buildings is typical for Belfast: red brick with Portland stone dressings.