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 SC 755771

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of D 76965 CN

Scope and Content Aerial View of Kingseat Hospital, New Machar, Aberdeenshire This splendid site was purchased in 1899, and the asylum, based on the colony system first developed at Alt Scherbitz in Germany, was constructed on a symmetrical plan. At its heart is the hospital block (centre), a large symmetrical building with advanced gables and wings. Radiating out from its centre are a number of large, imposing, two-storeyed villas, each containing a kitchen, dining rooms, bathroom and sleeping accommodation for male or female patients. The colony also included an administrative block (top) containing the kitchens, stores, laundry, recreation hall and the medical superintendent's house. Villas were considered the best form of accommodation for patients, and at Kingseat the plan was developed a stage further. In December 1897, Dr John Sibbald, a Scottish Lunacy Commissioner, published a paper on 'The Plan of Modern Asylums for the Insane Poor' which he based on the design of the asylum at Alt Scherbitz in Germany and recommended as a model for future asylums in Scotland. The design at Kingseat was based on Sibbald's plan, and resolved to adopt a system 'by which fatuous and insane persons, instead of being crowded into one large building, are attended to in separate colonies under adequate oversight. The buildings are dotted in picturesque fashion over the area which is intersected with walks, margined by shrubs and broken by trees.' 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.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/755771

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap