UNIVERSITY COLLEGE HOSPITAL, NW1
London Archive Chronicles
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The weather forecast promised a fine, warm day. I got up early, drank a cup of coffee and packed my gear. I walked through the Greenwich Tunnel to the other side of the Thames, Island Gardens and the closest Santander Bikes spot. The temperature drops considerably inside the tunnel, and I looked forward to start pedalling on the bike to warm up. It was my first time riding a bicycle in London. The sense of freedom I first felt changed into wariness as soon as I had to cross the street next to cars and trucks. I felt relieved when I got to the cycle super highway, not only because I felt less exposed but also because it is painted turquoise blue. I thought to myself that it was almost like cycling in the sea (there rarely is a dull moment for anyone with an imagination like mine) I docked the bike along Victoria Embankment, close to Charing Cross, and continued on foot, through empty London.
There are certain places in London that evoke personal as well as what I call secondary memories, conjured up from old photographs and film footage from a time before I was born. I have seen images of Piccadilly Circus, for example, before visiting it myself and formed an idea of it and the kind of London it portrays. I walked through Piccadilly Circus now and remembered the several times being stuck in a bus there, only moving a metre or two at a time. I recalled the times I had walked through it on my way to walk to Carnaby Street at a similar hour, sharing the pavement with both people on their way back from night clubs and those, like me, on their way to work in hospitality. That morning Piccadilly Circus was eerily desolate. I looked at its neon signs, a somewhat dated but famous sight in London, now displaying messages of resilience and courage and remembered the black and white photographs I had seen of it. It is bizarre to feel nostalgia for something I have no immediate experience of. It was close to 9am when I got to the University College Hospital. I admired the range of blues, mint, and turquoise, the reflection of the glass, the horizontal and vertical lines, and the triangular shape over the front doors. It is a serene sight. People went in and out of the front doors; some, after seeing me with my camera across the road, hurried away, whether out of politeness towards me or because they didn’t wish to be photographed, a sentiment that I share and respect. I struggled to compose the image so that all the lines were straight and only almost succeeded — my beloved Rolleiflex distorts the view noticeably from some angles. University College Hospital is a teaching hospital in Bloomsbury, founded as North London Hospital in 1834. In 1906 it moved to a new site on Gower Street, Cruciform building, designed by Alfred Waterhouse. Waterhouse is also the architect of the Natural History Museum among other Victorian Gothic buildings of the era. The Cruciform Building was bought by UCL after its use as a hospital came to an end in 1995. The new hospital, the one in my photograph, was designed by Llewelyn Davies Yeang and opened in 2005. Given the title and setting of this series, ‘Lockdown Trails’, I feel the pressure to write about the pandemic, or at least about a personal account of self-isolation. However, there is nothing interesting for the reader in the latter and I am unqualified to write about the former. All that I can humbly say is that we are indebted to medical science and its break throughs. In that spirit, to honour the medical profession, I searched images of London’s bygone hospitals. The number of hospitals there have been is overwhelming. I have chosen a selection of images for this post and I highly recommend going to London Picture Archive’s website to see more. (originally published on 31.05.2021) |
© Carita Silander
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Smallpox hospital, Euston Road. Engraving, 1771
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Chelsea Royal Hospital. Coloured engraving, 1700s
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St Thomas Hospital, Southwark, moved to Lambeth in 1862 when the area was acquired for the site of London Bridge station. Engraving, c1825
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View of St Bartholomew's Chapel, Hackney. The chapel was part of a leper hospital known as the Lock Hospital. Engraving, c1830
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View of Greenwich Hospital across the Thames. The Royal Naval Hospital, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, was built in the 1690s, using the Queen's House as a centre point. The hospital was closed in 1869 and re-opened in 1873 as the Royal Naval College. Engraving, 1814
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Smallpox hospital ship: Joyce Green Hospital, Dartford. Photograph.
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St George's Hospital, Westminster. Photograph, 1912
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St George's Hospital, Westminster. Photograph, 1985. Images courtesy of the London Picture Archive
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