Instigated by Canon John Erskine Clarke, Bolingbroke House (see below for more information) was acquired and opened in 1880 as Bolingbroke Self-Supporting Hospital and House in Sickness. The building was modified and extended in phases: 1901 (Victoria Memorial wing on the north-east of the site), 1906 (Canon Erskine Clarke wing to the north), 1914 (Bolingbroke wing) and 1925/27 (William Shepherd Memorial wing) shown in this photo. This left the old mansion (which you can just see at the right of this photo) hemmed in so in 1937 it was demolished and replaced with a central administration block and main entrance for the Hospital - this last forming an elegant, dignified space designed as the WW1 memorial for the hospital.
Following concerns expressed in a fire safety report the hospital was closed 2005/8 and the building was converted into a secondary school. The Bolingbroke Academy opened in September 2012.
The first floor bay window with the square black panes (seen in our photo here), is clearly not as originally constructed (compare with the extreme left of the photo on this page). The room behind is the Ann Carmichael children's ward (paid for by the Carmichaels) which is tiled with utterly charming scenes from nursery rhymes, one above each child's bed. The tile panels (some supplied by Carter & Co. and some by W. B. Simpson & Sons) were financed by funds raised by the nursing staff.
We've seen similar decorations in the old children's ward at the University College Hospital and wondered if they ware a common feature in hospitals at the time. We found: the Evelina Children’s Hospital/ St Thomas' Hospital (more images at Vauxhall and Kennington), Bedford Hospital, Ealing Hospital. All lovely. There are probably others. At Bolingbroke the tiles are still in situ but the children's ward now houses the school library.
Inside on the ground floor there is a board, 'The Weir Hospital Charity', with a list of 22 Benefactions between 1912 and 1944, giving the name of the benefactor and the amount given. The Weir Hospital, founded under the provision of the Will of Benjamin Weir, opened in Grove Road, Balham, in December 1911. It closed in 1977 and the site is now occupied by the Molly Huggins housing estate. It seems likely that the board of benefactions was retrieved prior to demolition and the Bolingbroke was considered a good site for it.
Bolingbroke House, built in 1777, was the grandest of the 5 houses in Five Houses Lane (now Bolingbroke Grove) and owned by Viscount Bolingbroke. The best photo we have found is at Julian Bream showing the house after having become a hospital but before the large extensions.
This photo, from the Historic England Listing, shows that the wards in the William Shepherd Memorial wing originally had wide, open, balconies, at a time when fresh air was an important treatment.
Sources: Lost Hospitals of London, UCL Bartlett.
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