Oblique aerial view centred on the hospital, taken from the SSW.

Description Oblique aerial view centred on the hospital, taken from the SSW.

Date 1/5/2001

Collection RCAHMS Aerial Photography

Catalogue Number D 76965 CN

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 755771, SC 755772

Scope and Content Aerial View of Kingseat Hospital, New Machar, Aberdeenshire This splendid open site, purchased in 1899, was developed and laid out on a symmetrical plan, with a large hospital block with advanced gables and wings at its heart (centre), and four large, two-storeyed villas radiating out from its centre. An administrative block was built to the rear of the hospital block (top), and the extensive grounds laid out with walkways, hedges, shrubberies, a vegetable garden and sports grounds. There were three sections to the village - the administrative department, the industrial and colony section, and the medical block. The administrative section contained the kitchens, stores, laundry, steward's house, recreation hall and medical superintendent's house. The industrial and colony section was made up of workshops for the men and villas for male and female patients. Each villa had its own kitchen and dining rooms, with bathrooms and sleeping accommodation on the upper floor. The medical section consisted of a large hospital block, and two observation villas. Kingseat Hospital, designed by the Aberdeen architect, Alexander Marshall Mackenzie (1848-1933), opened in 1904 as the District Asylum for Aberdeen for pauper lunatics. It was the first mental hospital in Scotland to be designed on the colony or village system, and is an excellent example of the type, set out with self-contained villas, administrative and medical blocks. It was also the first asylum successfully to abandon an enclosing wall. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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