Building record 7203/122/1 - Rushden Hospital

Built in 1871 as a private residence. Rushden House Sanatorium had been established by 1923, the two-storey house served as the administrative block. Outbuildings used originally as stabling, workshops, staff accomodation in the attic, and storing game were also utilised. The outbuildings are built of coursed limestone rubble with lock quoins and brick and terracotta dressings to the openings. The roofs are covered in machine-made plain tiles. The buildings have been altered internally. Prisoner of War camp during WWI and subsequently bought by the council and used as a tuberculosis sanatorium until 1950. Earlier hospital buildings were replaced by 4 single-storey ward blocks in the 1930's. Now a geriatric/psychiatric hospital.

{1} Rushden House was purchased by the council for a tuberculosis sanatorium. The complex is now owned by The Rockingham Forest NHS Trust and still used as a hospital. A large number of the buildings survive including the main house and along with a number of more recent additions. Film 18, photo 17-25.

{3} Rushden House in Wymington Road was constructed upon the site in 1871 as a large Victorian residence. It was built in the domestic Gothic style of architecture, for Henry William Currie on land purchased from F.U. Sartoris of Rushden Hall, which lies 0.5km to the north. The Ordnance Survey
map of 1889 shows Rushden House and a number of outbuildings to the north of it. After Henry’s death, his daughter-in-law, Flora Currie, continued to live at the House until her death in 1901. By 1904, Edward Campbell Browning, a London barrister, was resident. After his death in 1914, the house was never again a family home.

George Henry Lane, a Kettering leather merchant, bought the house after Edward’s remaining family left. He did not live at the house but had the vegetable gardens cultivated for produce. During the 1914-18 war it became a prisoner-of-war camp, and was known locally as ‘Ploughman’s Camp’. By
1921, it was purchased by the Council for a tuberculosis sanatorium. The Ordnance Survey map of 1927 labels the site as Rushden House Sanatorium and a number of ward buildings had been built to the south of the main house by this time. The Ordnance Survey map of 1938 shows further Sanatorium buildings to the south by this date. The Sanatorium continued in use until 1950 where it then became a geriatric and psychiatric hospital until 1992. Within the next 14 years the House became partitioned and subsequently used as office space. To date, Rushden House is no longer in use and now empty.

{4} The hospital complex was developed around a substantial dwelling-house (Rushden House) and has incorporated some of the outbuildings and domestic offices relating to that house. Rushden House Sanatorium was established by 1923 when it appeared as such on the 2500 Ordnance Survey map. The two ranges of buildings which are the subject of this application lie on the north-eastern boundary of the hospital site; they are now much-altered but appear to have been used originally as stabling and workshops with some staff accommodation on the attic floor of the western block. The square building at the west end of the eastern block may have served as a game larder; indicated by its ventilation.

Two ranges of former estate service buildings and workshops now forming the north-eastern boundary of the Rushden Hospital site.

Both ranges appear contemporary and are built of coursed limestone rubble with block quoins and brick and terracotta dressings to the openings. Roofs are steeply pitched and clad in machine-made plain tiles (with cresting to alternate ridge tiles on the western range). Gables have close-verges with barge-boards pierced with decorative holes.

The eastern range, roughly rectangular in plan, is single-storey and has irregular fenestration of timber casements with glazing bars and wide doorways to former workshops adjoining. At the west end is a taller building with a central (now truncated) ridge vent dressed in lead. The ground floor is set at a higher level with steps up to a central doorway in the north wall. There are two segmental brick arches to former basement vents flanking the south-west corner. In the gable wall is an oculus, dressed in red brick with four limestone key-blocks. Here there is an added porch, the roof of which cuts across a section of the occulus.

The western range is L-shaped on plan and of one storey with attics. Irregular fenestration of one, two and three-light windows with glazing bars; louvres in some openings. The attics are lit by gabled dormers with 2-light casements with glazing bars. There is one axial chimney stack the in the southern return: it is an addition or has been rebuilt. Original framed and boarded doors survive, one with a rectangular fanlight.
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Some original joinery and boarded partitions survive. The roof structures also appear contemporary, with a mixture of king-post, queen-strut and purlins strutted by collars; All fairly typical of the date.

The outbuildings are too modest and have some changes and are not considered to be of special importance in the national context. They do not therefore meet the selection criteria for buildings of their date and cannot be considered for listing.

Historic England, Rushden Hospital, BF100399 (Archive). SNN115429.

<1> Ballinger J., 1999, Northamptonshire Extensive Urban Survey: Industrial Period, (unchecked) (Digital archive). SNN4.

<2> Richardson H. (Editor), 1998, English Hospitals 1660-1948: A Survey of Their Architecture and Design, (unchecked) (Book). SNN62723.

<3> Letch, A, 2014, Historic Building Record: Rushden Hospital, Rushden, Northamptonshire, April 2014 (Report). SNN111054.

<4> ENGISH HERITAGE, English Heritage Listing File, Mr C Jeffries HPA, (24-Jan-2007) (Report). SNN111579.

Record last edited

Sep 6 2023 12:20PM