Killearn Hospital, Stirling: Historic Building Recording Survey
Date 17 May 2021 - 19 May 2021
Event ID 1172604
Category Building History
Type Demolition Application
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1172604
This Data Structure Report forms the archaeological record of the historic building recording survey undertaken prior to the demolition of the existing buildings at the former Killearn Hospital at Killearn in Stirling. Thirty surviving buildings were recorded across the site although this did not form a complete record of the hospital complex as many of the buildings had been demolished, possibly due to the unsafe nature of some of the surviving structures.
Killearn Hospital (NRHE Site Number: NS58SW 20) was built in the early stages of World War II as part of the Emergency Hospital Service which anticipated numerous civilian casualties resulting from air raids. Land was requisitioned to the east of the ruined Killearn House, and a large number of Ministry of Works standard huts erected, based around a prefabricated framework of precast concrete with brick and fenestration infill. The hospital was completed in 1940.
During World War II, Killearn Hospital was managed by both the local authority and the military, as it was required to deal with injured service personnel and local emergencies. By the end of the war, it had 640 beds and neuro-surgical, orthopaedic and peripheral nerve injury specialist units. The complement is reported to have been reduced to 404 after the war (Stirling Council Archives).
In 1948 Killearn Hospital joined the National Health Service under the Board of Management for Glasgow Western Hospitals and, in the post-war period, became the Neurological/Medical/Surgical unit for the West of Scotland prior to transfer as the Institute of Neurological Sciences
to the Southern General Hospital, Glasgow in 1970s. Killearn Hospital was abandoned in 1972 (NRHE and Stirling Council Archives).
Approximately 57 buildings formed the Killearn Emergency Hospital Complex; 27 of these have now been demolished. The majority of the buildings had been stripped out internally and were in a very dilapidated state, but those that survived were subjected to photographic survey. With the aid of a ground plan of the hospital buildings supplied by the landowner [G.S.] it was possible to identify the functions of the majority of the buildings subjected to the survey, and produce a ground plan of the buildings’ locations and their method of construction illustrated by photographs.
Information from OASIS Id: guardarc1-422195 (Blair, A. H.) 2021
