Interior-general view of Billiard Room in Craig House

Description Interior-general view of Billiard Room in Craig House

Date 1895

Collection Records of Bedford Lemere and Company, photographers, London, England

Catalogue Number BL 13230

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 701981, B 64301

Scope and Content Billiard Room, Craighouse Mental Asylum, Craighouse Road, Edinburgh (latterly the Royal Edinburgh Hospital and presently part of Napier University) Craighouse Mental Asylum, a huge chateau designed by the architect, Sydney Mitchell, was built in 1889-94 as new hospital premises for the Royal Edinburgh Asylum. The billiard room, one of the hospital's public rooms, was photographed in 1895 by the architectural photographer, Harry Bedford Lemere. This rather masculine room is panelled to above door height, and has a deep frieze in a boldly patterned paper and a ribbed ceiling. The large, arched inglenook has bench seating to one side of the fireplace, and its flooring raised in order to provide a good view over the billiard table. The hospital was designed on the lines of a hydropathic hotel with well-appointed public rooms, and entertainment in the form of billiard rooms and a bowling alley. The billiard room was the domain of male patients who were sometimes offered tobacco and billiards as an incentive for good behaviour. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Medium Glass

External Reference Box 23

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