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• ADS Collection: 2476
• DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1042739
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Building 32: Recreation Hall

The Recreation Hall is a large building in the Central Hospital Area, immediately to the north-east of the main hospital road. Built in 1939, it remains one of the most striking of the hospital buildings and as the hub of social activity, including annual pantomimes which attracted audiences in their thousands, was a focal point of Hospital life. The building was not subject to internal building recording as it was deemed unsafe, but had been previously subject to an Assessment of Significance by Simpson & Brown Architects (Appendix 2, Conservation Plan).

The building is composed of reconstituted stone. It is rectangular in plan and has a central two-story seven-bay central hall with a pitched roof clad in Westmorland slate, timber eaves and profiled gutter. A chapel, flanked by vestry and kitchens, with a first floor projector room above, lies at the north end of the hall, and a stage and dressing rooms behind to the south. The main hall is lit by steel-framed clerestory windows along the east (front) elevation, and three full-height steel-framed windows central places in the west (rear) elevation, with French windows at their base. The single storey frontage with flat roofs contains two large round-fronted rooms with faceted bay windows – the library and ‘practical room’ – and the entrance lobby with toilets. Access to the building is gained through two doors in the frontage for segregated male and female access.