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A musical celebration of 150 years of the Berwick Infirmary, designed by John Starforth.
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Click to watch Starforth's Tower on YouTube
Berwick Infirmary was opened in 1874, 150 years ago, and has served the people in and around Berwick well. With the new Berwick Community Hospital approaching completion, the Infirmary front - all that the NHS Trust has planned to preserve - faces an uncertain future.
But this is a vital piece of Berwick's history, and a familiar landmark. A new use must be found for this charming building. Notes on the song 'Florence Nightingale's Plan' refers to her advocacy of the pavilion plan. This is from www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/london-stories/how-florence-nightingale-shaped-london-healthcare/: “The first principle of hospital construction is to divide the sick among separate pavilions,” she wrote in her 1863 Notes on hospitals.
Pavilions were large, rectangular, open-plan wards that made it easier for nurses to supervise all patients. These wards became known as Nightingale Wards. The new hospitals also had plenty of windows to let in fresh air and light. This challenged the traditionally held belief that bad air, or ‘miasma’, spreads diseases and shouldn’t enter a building.
The two other Starforth buildings illustrated are the old Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, and the astonishing Peebles Hydro, destroyed in a fire in 1905 and rebuilt in 1907.