Royal Victoria Hospital Proposals: Latest
The RVH was built in the 1880s and extended between the wars.
Go Folkestone, primarily Judith Deane, Ann Berry and Richard Wallace. led the
effort to get the oldest part listed and the closure justified, and talked to
the Trust and its surveyors. Others even tried to get a transfer of the building
to a partially military hospital. But Canterbury, Folkestone and Buckland in
Dover have all found that the complexity of modern medicine leads to
concentration. English Heritage whilst praising the facade refused a listing but
our efforts probably influenced the Trust’s official proposals, which preserve
the facilities of very recent times and the front of the old central ‘Clock
Block’.
The proposals, not a planning application, but clearly a planning brief to
inform the inevitable private purchasers are as follows .The modern Minor
Injuries Unit remains and is expanded into the adjacent oblong former nurses
home wing .The latter is converted into three or four storeys of clinics and
rooms, some for mental health offices and consultations. The Derry dialysis unit
is thereby given enough room, we are told, to function, covering a wide area
beyond Folkestone, and the X Ray facilities are to be increased. However the
maternity and geriatric beds that existed a few years ago will not return, all
the other buildings on the site, except the 1880s facade will be demolished.
These such as, the Wakefield Hall are in truth badly dated.
The Trust suggest a development of about 110 flats with 110 parking spaces BUT
this not to be allocated but to be available to the ‘hospital’ too. It may work,
and the retention of the frontage gives an architectural standard to which the
development may aspire. Certainly Radnor Park can support a classy development.
But will the planners allow a load of flat roofed crud around the back, or a
modern mansard perched tastelessly on top of the old block? These matters are
not clear and hopefully we are crying wolf. And will the patents get the parking
at the front that is logical for sick and anxious people?
The 5 or so four storey blocks on the site of the old tennis courts, the 1920s
block, the Wakefield Hall etc are all unsurprising. The surprise is right at the
back where the Trust are shown to own the slope outside their fence going right
down to the Pent Stream. Here a block, four storeys like the others, is proposed
right up to the footpath. A tiny muddy little car pork could go, but so would
many big trees, a lot of stability, and much of the peace of the popular
footpath. This unexpected extra may be a step too far.
Cllr Richard Wallace.
Article from Go Folkestone Newsletter September 2007
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