Nurses' Home -view from ESE Digital image of E 3969 cn

Description Nurses' Home -view from ESE Digital image of E 3969 cn

Date 8/11/2001

Catalogue Number SC 776771

Category On-line Digital Images

Scope and Content Nurses' Home, Sunnyside Royal Hospital, Hillside, Montrose, Angus, from the east-south-east This impressive harled and painted building, constructed on an H-plan, has a long south-facing front with uninterrupted views over the hillside. The two-storeyed central section has a long line of unusual dormer windows, and a stone-built rectangular entrance porch with tall pointed-arch windows and a flat roof which doubles as a sun terrace for the floor above. The three-storeyed gabled end wings have stone margins around the windows, and large ground-floor bay windows to denote the principal public rooms. In the early years of the asylum, the nurses who cared for the mentally ill were untrained men and women. Quite often these attendants were former patients who had shown some aptitude or desire to nurse others after their own recovery, and were usually the working poor, commanding low wages and having limited access to education. In the late 19th century, it became apparent that if patient care were to develop beyond merely maintaining patients in custody, staff would be required to be specially trained in psychiatric mental health nursing. Dr Campbell Clark, the medical superintendent at Hartwood Asylum, Shotts, was one of the first to recognise this, having previously worked as a male attendant. In 1885 he published the 'Handbook for the Training of Mental Nurses', and later instituted one of the first training programmes in accordance with the syllabus laid down by the Medico-Psychological Association. Sunnyside Royal Hospital, designed by the architect, William Lambie Moffatt (1808-82), was built in 1855-7 on a hillside site 6km north of Montrose to replace the old Royal Asylum in the town. The new site was further developed in 1888-91 when a hospital block, designed by the architects, Sydney Mitchell & Wilson, was built to the north-west of the main building, and a large villa, Carnegie Lodge, designed by the Aberdeen architect, William Kelly (c.1861-1944), was added to house private patients. Another two villas, Howden Villa and North Esk Villa, were built in the early 1900s to provide accommodation for pauper patients, and a nurses' home was constructed in 1935. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/776771

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap