Building record 1160/441/15 - Clare House

{1} As part of the conversion of the workhouse into a hospital, additional on-site accommodation for an increased nursing staff became necessary. This took the form of a substantial extension to the original nurses home, built (on map evidence) between 1924 and 1936. The resulting enlarged nurses home became known as Clare House.
The extension comprises a six-bay, three-storey building, and a narrower entrance section linking it to the original part. The structure comprises purplish-red brick laid in English Bond, with corner and intermediate buttresses, and concrete lintels and sills. Windows are for the most part 6-6 sashes, with 1-1 sashes used in toilets. In the linking section, windows comprise pairs of 1-1 sashes with a central mullion. The roof is hipped, clad with red clay tiles.
Beneath the linking section was a cellar, accessed externally. A second cellar room was located beneath the area outside the main entrance.
Internally, each floor of the main part of the building originally contained ten rooms of equal size, on either side of a central north-south corridor, with a door to a fire excape at the south end. Some of the intermediate partitions have subsequently been removed: the plans show the building as it was when used as a nurses' home. On the ground and first floor was a bathroom and toilet, and one ground-floor room is identified as a sisters' sitting room. On the ground floor of the linking structure was an entrance hall and cloakroom: the upper floors each comprised a stairwell, landing and utility room.

<1> Zeepvat B., 2004, Historic Building Survey: St Edmund's Hospital, Wellingborough Road, Northampton, p.30 (checked) (Report). SNN104796.

Record last edited

Jun 30 2004 8:22AM