Old Liverpool Hospital

About

Old Liverpool Hospital is a heritage-listed former hospital and now technical college at College Street, Liverpool, City of Liverpool, New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by Francis Greenway, Edmund Blacket and Walter Liberty Vernon and was built from 1822 to 1958, originally with the use of convict labour. Variously known as the Colonial Medical Service Hospital, Benevolent Asylum, Government Asylum and Liverpool State Hospital and Asylum, it is now the Liverpool campus of TAFE NSW. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 11 December 2009.

Aboriginal occupation of the Liverpool region

Some 40,000 years before the colonisation of Liverpool, this land was occupied by the Darug people and the neighbouring Tharawal and Gandangara tribes. The land was known as Gunyungalung and the Georges River was the natural boundary between the Darug, or "woods" tribe, and the "coast" tribes of Tharawal and Gandangara. Although there was a long and established occupation of the site prior to colonisation, there are no known Aboriginal sites within the former Liverpool Hospital complex.

European colonisation and the establishment of the first Liverpool Hospital

In 1810, following the lead of the prominent pioneer Thomas Moore, Governor Lachlan Macquarie set out on a surveying expedition along the newly discovered Georges River. On the undulating Cumberland Plain and the banks of the Georges River, Governor Macquarie located the new township of Liverpool.

The construction of a hospital, to accommodate and service the health requirements of a predominantly convict population, was an early development in Liverpool and one granted a picturesque location on the banks of the Georges River. Macquarie chose this position because he envisioned the hospital building to be striking when viewed from either the river itself or from the township.

Macquarie's original use of this location was as the site of the first Liverpool hospital, built in 1810. This first hospital was a small brick, three-room construction built to accommodate up to 30 patients. For a growing population such as Liverpool's, this first hospital quickly became overcrowded and under-equipped to service the township. Although coming to the end of his time as governor, Macquarie undertook one of his grandest projects in the construction of the second (and surviving) Liverpool Hospital. This project was to become part of Macquarie's lasting legacy and it was the last major design involving Francis Greenway, Macquarie's appointed Civil Architect.

Construction of Liverpool Hospital (Block B)

In 1820, Macquarie called upon Greenway to draw up the early designs for the new Liverpool Hospital. Following Macquarie's return to England in 1822 and the downgrading of significant colonial investment in public works, the designs for the Liverpool Hospital were reassessed and altered by Greenway to suit the needs of the incoming governor, Sir Thomas Brisbane. To the north of the first 1810 hospital, construction of the new facility commenced in 1822 but, following the laying of the foundations and a quarrel over the prepared estimates and bills, Greenway was dismissed by Governor Brisbane and a new government architect, Standish Lawrence Harris, was appointed. Harris inspected the foundations already in place and concluded that, due to poor materials and workmanship, the footings should be removed and relaid. By the end of 1822, these foundations had been replaced and construction of the walls was underway.

With Greenway's departure in 1822 and the growing attention being paid to the extended public budget, progress on the hospital construction slowed. Although attributed to Greenway, there is conflicting evidence as to whose design the current construction actually reflects. Since leaving the project in 1822, and the official starting date of construction in 1824, there is a significant chance that Greenway's plans were reviewed and altered according to the direction of the governor of the time. The earliest surviving plans of the hospital construction, "Plans and Elevation of the General Hospital Liverpool", date from 1825/26. Being unsigned, there is no tangible evidence to indicate whether the original Greenway designs survived intact or in an altered form. With Brisbane's time as governor of the colony coming to an end in 1825, and the arrival of Governor Ralph Darling, the construction of the hospital was, once again, continued under the direction of a new governor. Although the walls of the hospital were complete and the roof construction was underway, it is possible that the plans may well have undergone changes after 1825.

By December 1829, the construction of the Liverpool Hospital was finally complete. After seven years of construction, and multiple suspected changes to its original design, the final building was a distinct departure from the simple box-like structures of many public buildings in the colony. This creative design, although possibly altered, is attributed to Greenway's design skills and the influence of the former Governor Macquarie on the creation of the civic environment in the colony.

Despite construction commencing in 1822 (though officially in 1824) and finishing in 1829, the main building of the former Liverpool Hospital complex has a distinctive "1825" embossed sandstone plaque above the entrance. As this date does not correlate with either the commencement or conclusion of the construction work, it is undetermined what the 1825 date actually relates to. Perhaps it is the date of the earliest surviving plans, but this reference remains unsubstantiated.

While the construction of the main hospital building was underway, the convict labourers also undertook the construction of the brick wall that surrounds the complex, that has survived largely intact. By 1829, convict bricklayers and stonemasons had built a 10-foot high wall, with stone entrance pillars, that was to remain, almost in its entirety, as a historical boundary for the site. This wall has limited the physical expansion of the site throughout its history and ensured that, while the site did not expand, the buildings and the land had a continual history of adaption, modification and reuse.

Colonial Medical Service Hospital (1830–51)

Following the completion of the construction of the main building in 1829 (there were some outbuildings to be completed in the following years), the Liverpool Hospital was officially opened with the Colonial Medical Service tenanting the new building. With Liverpool being the new centre for the dispatch of convict labour gangs in the colony, the objective of the health service was to care for the significant convict population in the area. Control of the new hospital was undertaken by James Bowman, the Principal Surgeon and head of the Service. The facility was available to convicts labouring for the government free of charge. A fee, of between one and three shillings, was charged for free settlers and to convicts assigned to private colonists. The large convict population of Liverpool's early years fell away with the cessation of transportation to NSW from 1840 and the population of the promising new township started to decline. Without the population numbers needed to support the hospital, and with the inmates' accommodation and facilities becoming increasingly unhygienic and inadequate, the hospital soon lost its purpose and was vacated by the Colonial Medical Service in 1845.

The hospital site lay vacant for a short time but in 1850 both the Roman Catholic Church and the Benevolent Society were vying for the use of the site. The Benevolent Society, a government-supported organisation that Governor Macquarie had established in 1820, was a facility to care for the sick, destitute and aging population in Sydney and, with the original Sydney Asylum (near present-day Central railway station ) becoming increasingly overcrowded, the Society needed to acquire a new branch and expand quickly. The Society assessed the Liverpool site and, following approval for their use, opened this branch of the Benevolent Society in 1851, with the transfer of 240 male inmates. To reuse the site, additional buildings and alterations were required and the Government Architect, Edmund Blacket was called upon to make the necessary alterations and preparations to convert the hospital site to an asylum at a cost of 525 pounds. For his efforts, Blacket was made an Honorary Life Member of the Society. Despite the changes, the site was never adequate for the needs of the Benevolent Society, and it was becoming overcrowded even in 1852. Using the labour of the asylum inmates, further changes were made to accommodate additional beds but, by 1862, the Government had grown dissatisfied with the work of the Benevolent Society and it took over control and the future running of the facility.

The Government's takeover of the asylum signalled a major change in policy for health care in the colony. Approximately 403 patients were residing at the asylum at this time and the government appointed a Superintendent, Thomas Burnside, a retired army sergeant, to take over the day-to-day running of the facility. His wife, Mary Burnside, was appointed as the Matron to continue with the care of the patients in residence, alongside her husband. Following Thomas' death in 1869, William Strong was appointed as Medical Superintendent, from 1871 to 1886. He and Mary Burnside formed a remarkable professional team that, by the late 1870s, had cared for no fewer than 700 destitute, aged and infirm patients. In 1886, Strong was replaced by Joseph Aloysius Beattie, a hard but fair superintendent who remained at the Liverpool Asylum until his retirement in 1916. To compensate for the low salary for the professional medical superintendents at the asylum, Beattie was entitled to run a private practice from the site, even though this took him away from his work for long periods each day. Following his retirement, Beattie's private practice was taken on by his successors Dr MacDonald and Dr J. Pirie.

The Government Asylum period was one of great change to the site. With the rate of admissions growing steadily, the main hospital building was in need of extension and more permanent additions to accommodate the increasing numbers of inmates requiring care. The surviving wings flanking the main building (Blocks A & C) were designed by Edmund Blacket and constructed in 1866 and 1874, respectively. In an effort to be architecturally sympathetic to the design of the main hospital building, Blacket constructed these two-storey brick and slate wings to complement, without detracting from, the dominant physical presence of the 1820s hospital building (Block B).

As well as these adjoining wings, the former Liverpool Hospital complex has seen a long sequence of construction over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reflecting the changing needs of the site as a health facility. Many of these additions, alterations and constructions occurred while the Government was in control of the asylum because the once-model establishment was slowly disintegrating and was in dire need of repairs and new facilities. Block F was designed and constructed by Government Architect WL Vernon, c. 1902 -07, to replace the former kitchen and laundry buildings that dated from the early nineteenth century. The kitchen had always been in a separate building, away from the hospital because of an existing fear of fire, but by the early twentieth century, it was decided to enclose the various structures and combine a number of small buildings into the single complex. Block F is also dominated by a tall brick chimneystack. Although the stack is believed to have been rebuilt ( c. 1940 s), the base appears to be original, dating from c. 1902.

The forecourt space to the main hospital building (Block B) is distinguished by landmark plantings of a number of mature, significant trees including a hoop pine ( Araucaria cunninghamii ); Bunya pine ( Araucaria bidwillii ) and a Norfolk Island pine ( Araucaria heterophylla ). These may date from c. 1850s but at least date from the Government Asylum era. Bunya pines were only "discovered" by Europeans in 1848 and brought from Queensland to NSW soon after, being rapidly planted in key private and public gardens since - notably Government buildings such as court houses, schools, hospitals. Hoop pines have been used from earlier, c. 1820s onward and Norfolk Island pines from earlier still. These araucaria trees featured in a c. 1920s drawing of the hospital made by architect and artist William Hardy Wilson in his book "Old Colonial Buildings of NSW and Tasmania ". Block C has a mature native cypress/ Port Jackson pine ( Callitris rhomboidea ) and a number of mature tree ferns ( Alsophila sp. or Cyathea sp.) close to or against the building.