Guy's Hospital, Bermondsey, London |
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Click on photos below to enlarge Notes in italics are from London 2: South by Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner (1983) Yale University Press, New Haven and London. |
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| GUY'S HOSPITAL, St Thomas Street.
Thomas Guy founded his hospital right opposite St Thomas', of
which he had been a governor from 1704, to remedy the overcrowding of
the older hospital. ... He began building in 1721 and died in 1724,
leaving £200,000 for the endowment of the hospital. ... The old part is
a large symmetrical building with two inner cloistered courtyards ... and two far-projecting wings forming a cour
d'honneur. ... The original design was by Thomas Dance (no known
relation to George Dance) who died in 1733. ... A statue of Guy by Scheemakers, 1734, stands in the forecourt, a fine, humble figure ... The iron railings to St Thomas Street date from 1741. ... |
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| The two inner courtyards are separated by a block with an open arcade. ... The ranges around the courtyards were built in 1721-5 ... Originally the courtyards also had open arcades. They were glazed in 1788, to provide additional ward space. The wards remained in use until 1962. In one courtyard a statue of Lord Nuffield by Maurice Lambert (1944). In the other is preserved an alcove from the London Bridge of 1758-62, removed during widening in 1902-4. ... | ||||
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| E wing added in 1738-41 by James Steere, Dance's successor as surveyor (for looming modern tower see below). The W wing (on right, containing the chapel) was not built until 1774-7 by R. Jupp Jun., although a view of 1739 and other evidence shows that both wings had been planned in Guy's lifetime. The centrepiece was transformed by Jupp in 1774 by means of a Palladian stone-faced frontispiece with two outer giant pilasters and four inner attached giant columns, all Ionic, and with sculpture by Bacon: two niches with statues of Aesculapius and Hygeia on the first floor, three bas reliefs, and allegorical figures in the pediment. The ground floor is rusticated and arcaded, the rest of the building is stock brick. ... | ||||
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| Interior of Chapel. This has groined vaulted galleries on three sides, and houses the monument to Guy by Bacon, 1779, one of the noblest and most sensitive of its date in England. It still has the compositional flourish and technical mastery of the Baroque and Roubiliac, yet shows the genuine warm feeling of the new age. The sanctuary of the chapel was remodelled in 1956. Marble arch over the altar by Louis Osman. | ||||
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| Many other buildings were added to the hospital in the 19th and
20th centuries, including the dominant thirty-storey GUY'S TOWER,
1963-75. The tower consists of two parts: a plain rectangle with continuous window
bands shielded by solid balconies, and the ribbed-concrete-faced service
tower with the lumpy projection of the lecture theatre near the top. Picture on the right is the BOILER SUIT in front of the tower, a facade encasing the boiler house of the hospital. Designed by Heatherwick Studios and completed 2007. It consists of 108 panels of woven stainless steel braid. |
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