Hartwood Hospital Administration Block, Hartwood Hospital, Hartwood

Group of Baronial-style hospital buildings which are surviving elements of once much larger complex on the site. Large 2-storey, double pitched and gabled central administration block with advanced gabled bay to centre and 6-stage paired square clock towers to rear (NW) corners. Pair of 3-storey villa style ward blocks set back to left and right and linked to main block by remnants of glazed corridors which also link to large single storey roughly T-plan range of ancillary buildings to rear. Clock towers with single round angle stair turrets to front corners, crenulated parapets and openings to former clock faces to each side (clock faces damaged). Bull-faced cream sandstone rubble masonry with ashlar dressings. Canted bays, transomed and mullioned windows and crowstepped gables.

The remaining buildings of the former Hartwood Hospital site are an important remnant of the extensive late 19th century asylum hospital complex which was designed with fine Scots Baronial features and stonework including prominent paired clock towers and near symmetrical flanking wings. The surviving buildings act as striking architectural landmarks in the wider open landscape. The hospital blocks were constructed in a diversified plan to accommodate increasing specialisation in the care of psychiatric patients. The main Hartwood Hospital building block with central towers and side wings was designed and built from 1890 by the local architect J L Murray from Biggar as the Lanark District Asylum covering the Lanarkshire area. The 1857 Lunacy (Scotland) Act required all areas to build a District Asylum for its 'pauper lunatics'. The need for more diverse classification of the patients and the better management of different types of psychiatric conditions in the late 19th century led to a wider variety of building types and plans for hospitals built during this period. Hartwood was purposely built on an isolated site for exclusion. The initial build took five years to complete at a cost of £153,000, opening on 14th May 1895 and able to house 420 residents. The industrialisation of the surrounding area boosted the local population and resident numbers rose accordingly reaching 960 by 1913. The expansion required more building and another local architect James Lochhead was commissioned to build more wards and other buildings; a sanatorium in 1904, new reception block in 1916, and male staff hostel in 1936. The largest, and only remaining, one of these was the Nurses Home accommodation built from 1926 and opened in 1931 (see separate listing). Most of the buildings were linked by glazed enclosed external walkways to control the movement of the patients around the site. By the mid 1950s Hartwood Hospital was a fully independent site which had created a hospital "village" with a variety of facilities including a bowling green, arcade of shops and a dancehall. The village system of patient care, exemplified by the Alt-Scherbitz hospital, near Leipzig in Germany in the 1870s encouraged psychiatric patients to be cared for within their own community setting. Hartwood was the largest asylum in Europe housing 2,500 residents. The introduction of the 1990 Community Care Act resulted in psychiatric care moving to the community and subsequent redundancy for the Hartwood Hospital buildings. From 1995 the hospital buildings moved to administration only and were totally vacated in 1998 to the nearby Hartwoodhill Complex. The majority of the later ward blocks on site were demolished during this period leaving only the main towers and flanking blocks and the ancillary buildings to the rear. Those that remain were damaged by fires in 2004 and 2011, with further damage by vandalism. The separate single storey laundry, boiler block and other ancillary blocks to the north of the site were not considered to be of special architectural or historic interest at the time of the review, 2013. (Historic Scotland)

March 2008: External inspection finds the building to be a roofless shell. Some window frames survive, the interior contains the charred remains of the collapsed floors.

August 2010: Local planners advise they are currently working with NHS Lanarkshire to identify the best way forward for the overall site. Whilst this process is underway, the buildings that make up the site have been removed from the market.

17 December 2014: External inspection finds the building remains in much the same condition as seen previously. The site is very damp.

14 March 2016: The BBC news website reports on a large blaze at the hospital site.

5 May 2016: A member of the public reports unauthorised accessing of the buildings continue.

10 April 2018: NHS Lanarkshire website notes (accessed 10/4/2018) the former hospital site has been sold to the Taylor Group Scotland Limited.

8 November 2018: Local planners note they have had initial discussions with the new owners of the site on a proposed redevelopment of the area. Some clearance is advised to have taken place to remove self-seeded trees within the boundary and improve site security, all with a view to detering unauthorised access of the buildings.

30 October 2019: Listed Building Consent for demolition of flat roofed extension and outbuilding approved subject to conditions (ref: 19/01139/LBC).

18 March 2020: Listed Building Consent for demolition of flat roofed extension and outbuilding to the general stores complex was conditionally approved in Oct 2019 (19/01139/LBC). Supporting documents within the application note the hospital site has been purchased by a development company committed to the restoration of the former hospital and nurses home in the longer term. They have identified temporary uses for the sites, including use of the nurses home site by Fire and Rescue Scotland, to deter the ongoing vandalism across the site.