York Historic Environment Record

Formerly known as: County Hospital MONKGATE. The County Hospital, now offices: gas lamp standards attached to front steps. 1849-1851. By JB and W Atkinson. Gas lamps by William Walker. Red brick with sandstone dressings. Hipped slate roof. Gas lamp standards of cast-iron with copper lanterns. PLAN: long rectangular.

EXTERIOR: 3 storeys above a basement and 15 bays. The facade has a deep rusticated plinth, quoin strips to left and right, moulded sill bands on the 1st and 2nd floors, a plain frieze, and a dentilled stone cornice beneath bracketed timber eaves. The basement is lit by low rectangular window openings within the plinth. The other windows are glazing bar sashes with architraves. The ground floor windows have cornices on consoles.

The first floor architraves are lugged and have cornices and pulvinated friezes. Second floor architraves are also lugged. The central windows are tripartite. The 1st floor window has a segmental pediment over its central light. Below its sill a panel of rusticated masonry contains the entrance doorway. It has pilaster reveals and a moulded round arch, recessed within a surround which has voussoirs and quoined jambs of vermiculated rustication and a keystone carved with a female head. The doors have 6 panels divided into 2 leaves.

The external stone steps and side walls are renewed in C20 concrete and brickwork. The walls support elaborate lamp standards with copper lanterns. The standards are inscribed 'W. WALKER YORK'. 8 chimneys visible behind ridge.

INTERIOR: not inspected. This building was closed as a hospital in 1977.

(An Inventory of the Historical Monuments of the City of York: RCHME: Outside the City Walls East of the Ouse: HMSO: 1975-: 49; York Historian: Haxby D and Malden J: Thomas Haxby of York (1729-1796): York: 1978-: 50).
Listing NGR: SE6074052254

Derived from English Heritage LB download dated: 22/08/2005

County Hospital, Monkgate, was designed by J. B. and W. Atkinson of York and opened in 1851. The original architects' drawings, dated 1849, are preserved in the office of Messrs. Brierley, Leckenby and Keighley, successors in practice to the Atkinsons. A hospital was opened in a house in Monkgate in 1740 and moved five years later into a new building which stood in front of the present building and which was pulled down in 1851 (VCH, York, 467–8). Additions to the new hospital include the Watt Wing opened in 1884 and a children's wing opened in 1899, both designed by Demaine and Brierley. The same architects probably designed a Nurses' Home, added in 1905. They also designed the iron balconies which were added to the E. side of the original building in 1902 but have since been removed.

The original building, of three storeys in brick with stone dressings above a basement of massive rusticated stonework, has a slate roof and forms a rectangular block about 185 ft. long by 56 ft. wide. The main W. front is designed in fifteen bays, the centre being marked by a large entrance with rusticated stone arch and tripartite windows above. Inside, the two main staircases have stone steps and balustrades with scrolled iron standards fixed into the ends of the steps, by William Walker. In the forecourt are lamp standards also by William Walker bearing his nameplate.

'Miscellaneous Secular Buildings', in An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in City of York, Volume 4, Outside the City Walls East of the Ouse (London, 1975), pp. 44-54. Monument 22

NMR Information

613515 Architectural Survey Investigation by RCHME/EH Architectural Survey
1050602 Architectural Survey RCHME: Hospitals Project

BF102439 YORK COUNTY HOSPITAL (COUNTY HOUSE)

Architect JB and W Atkinson 1851 1851
Architect COLIN ROWNTREE 1902 1905 Architect of York
Architect WALTER HENRY BRIERLEY 1902 1905 York based architect who continued with his partner James Demoine, the practice of John Carr. Referred to in the Bedford Lemere daybooks.
Photographer BOB SKINGLE 1998-02-05 1998-02-05 RCHME staff: York (Audit Group: SURVEY)

RCHME, 1975, RCHME Volume 4, Outside the City Walls East of the Ouse (Monograph). SYO2424.

RCHME, 1975, RCHME Volume 4, Outside the City Walls East of the Ouse (Monograph). SYO2424.