| Physical description: | The hospital comprises a number of significant components:
Trebartha/Hemsley House
The original Victorian house, Trebartha was constructed in 1867 and was fitted out as a hospital to provide for 11 beds in 1919. A new wing was constructed in 1921. It was converted, and extended to provide nurses quarters in 1936. This later extension is known as Hemsley House.
Trebartha is a two storey rendered masonry building, with partial basement, which has a hipped terracotta tiled roof. It now forms the western part of Hemsley House. Though heavily altered, the form of the original exterior of Trebartha remains with much internal fabric and features. Several of the windows are double hung Victorian sashes, notably to the rear. To the north is a glazed former verandah with steps down to a paved court with a café set into the basement. It retains some of its former domestic room layout and fabric of Victorian/Edwardian origins including plastered masonry walls, high moulded timber skirtings, moulded timber dado rails, decorative plaster cornices, lathe and plaster ceilings, and timber joinery. There is a fine polished timber stair with elegant timber newel posts and brackets
Hemsley House is a three/four storey inter- war stripped classical revival style building. It substantially retains Trebartha and its 1921 addition, and incorporates them into a new complex of two to three floors fronting Roslyn Street behind a unified stuccoed façade with a sandstone base. It is essentially a series of linked wings with rendered masonry walls to the upper levels with false ashlar joints on a course ashlar sandstone base. It has a multi-hipped roof clad in Marseilles pattern terracotta tiles with projecting timber boarded eaves. There are balconies to the first floor facing the main hospital.
The interiors are relatively intact with original doors, walls, stair and some bathrooms although recent refurbishment replaced the lift and reconfigured some of the rooms. There is a modern concrete fire stair at the southern end. The detailing to the earlier central section varies from that in the southern wing being Edwardian in style evidenced in the plastered masonry with plaster skirtings, fibrous plaster ceilings with batons and timber joinery . The south wing demonstrates its later construction by simple Inter-war detailing and a small scale cellular layout off a pinwheel corridor.
Kenilworth
Kenilworth, a two storey sandstone Victorian Gothic style building with a high pitched eternity slate roof with stone gables, timber framed double hung sash windows with pointed upper panes. To the north is a single storey timber verandah on a sandstone columned (now glazed) under croft. To the south is a later two storey extension in rendered masonry with coursing lines and a castellated parapet to a flat roof. The house is relatively intact internally although the basement has been altered and refurbished.
Lulworth
Lulworth is a two storey Victorian Style house, c 1860, with rendered masonry walls, timber framed windows and hipped roof with verandahs facing east. It has a garden to the north and east. It has been extensively altered internally with little surviving original fabric apart from two stone fire places on the ground floor and remnant joinery on the first floor. It is currently used as a nursing home.
Main Hospital Building
The Main Hospital Building is a 4-5 storey Colonial Revival/Mediterranean style building which opened in 1927. It has rendered masonry walls, a terracotta tiled roof which is hipped over the wings with projecting boarded eaves, and twelve pane double hung sash windows. The building had north facing verandahs with south facing verandahs to the outer wings in line with the medical concepts of the time.
The main entrance is to the south through a porch with a pedimented rood of columns in the classical form. Inside is the original hall with a timber stair and lift that rises up off the curved central bay. There are several unsympathetic additions to the front most notably a large lift tower and goods entrance. To the north the open balconies of the linking blocks and wings, and the arched openings to the central block have been infilled with alumium framed glazing.
The site falls to the east and there is a part basement here with new additions to the north between the hospital and Lulworth. A pool extension has been added to the upper level at Barncleuth Square.
The interior of the Main Hospital Building has been heavily altered although the main stair and principal room configuration with central corridor and wards off them is largely intact.
Site Features
Site Features including Lulworth sandstone Gate Piers, several sandstone walls and a rock cutting to the car park of the new "Trebartha."
Mature trees - these include a number of early trees, a Port Jackson Fig and cook pine that date to the garden of Kenilworth, and a camphor laurel, coral tree and lemon scented gum that may possibly have been part of the garden of Lulworth House.
( Based on Oultram 2006) |