Spread across 12 hectares of land in Gosforth, north Newcastle upon Tyne, St Nicholas Hospital is an NHS psychiatric hospital with a history stretching back to the Victorian era. Its entrance opens onto Jubilee Road, and the buildings on site range from original nineteenth-century structures to modern clinical facilities, all managed by Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust.
From Asylum to NHS Hospital
The hospital’s origins lie in a 50-acre farmstead called Dodd’s Farm at Coxlodge, purchased when Newcastle lacked any dedicated facility for mentally ill patients. Plans were drawn up in 1864 with architect William Lambie Moffatt appointed to design the building, and the site opened in July 1869 as the Newcastle upon Tyne Borough Lunatic Asylum. Some of its earliest patients arrived from Bensham Asylum after Durham County Magistrates declined to renew that facility’s contract. By 1882 the name had changed to the Newcastle upon Tyne City Lunatic Asylum, and extensions completed in 1887 – including the East and West Pavilions – added capacity for 80 more patients. During the First World War the patients were evacuated entirely, and the buildings became Northumberland No. 1 War Hospital, receiving wounded soldiers by train. The asylum function resumed in 1921, and in 1948 the National Health Service took over and renamed it St Nicholas Hospital. A new admissions unit, the Collingwood Clinic, opened in 1956. By the 1990s part of the original asylum buildings had been converted into housing, now known as Lanesborough Court, and the former Collingwood Clinic site was sold to what is now used by Virgin Money. A church within the hospital grounds burned down in 1986; the Ashgrove Nursing Home, built in 1994, now occupies that space.
Recent Development and the Bamburgh Clinic
Construction of the Bamburgh Clinic began in November 2004 on the site of a former fish factory, at a cost of £22 million, and was completed in April 2006. The clinic borders residential properties and a Northumberland Wildlife Trust wildlife centre and office. In 2009 the Greentrees unit and the Lennox Ward underwent renovation at a cost of around £8 million. That project – restoring two Victorian hospital buildings – was short-listed among eight finalists from 20 entries for the Best Design in the Community Benefit category at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors North-East Renaissance Awards.
The Jubilee Theatre
Within the hospital grounds, the Jubilee Theatre has been in use since 1899. It currently operates through two groups: Juniper Productions, a drama group for people with mental health difficulties founded in 1998, and First Act Theatre, an external theatre company which has used the space since 1992.