Former Wingfield Convalescent Home, Old Road
The former Wingfield Convalescent Home, opened in 1871, has now been demolished. In its latter days it was just an old building in the corner of the massive Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre which was built in its garden. The above postcard dates from the First World War, when the Home was used as a military hospital.
Headington can thank the following two people for the Wingfield Convalescent Home (and ultimately, of course, the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre):
- Hannah Wingfield (1788–1870). Her husband, Charles Wingfield, was appointed Surgeon of the Radcliffe Infirmary in c.1820 and remained in the post until his death from cholera in 1846.
- The Revd John Rigaud (1823–1888). John Rigaud, fourth son of Stephen Peter Rigaud, Savilian Professor of Mathematics and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Oxford, was brought up in the Radcliffe Observatory. He was a Fellow of Magdalen College from 1849 to 1888.
In the 1860s Rigaud campaigned for a fever ward to be built in the grounds of the Radcliffe Infirmary, and interested his friend Mrs Hannah Wingfield in the project. But Rigaud lost interest in this idea when it was proposed that members of the University should be allowed to pay for beds in the fever ward and so transferred the money so far collected to another of his projects, a convalescent home in the "pure air of Headington". Mrs Wingfield gave £2,500 which provided half the costs of purchasing from Magdalen College an 18-acre site on the corner of Old Road and Windmill Road; building and equipping costs; and some money to endow it. John Rigaud collected smaller contributions from friends and colleagues in the University: the first list of subscribers contained the names of 25 heads and fellows of colleges and local clergy.
The foundation stone was laid until Whit Monday 1871, a year after Mrs Wingfield’s death, so she never saw her project come to fruition, and the building was opened on the next Whit Monday in 1872. It was designed to accommodate eight men and eight women who were well enough to leave the Radcliffe Infirmary but were not well enough to go home. The building, which is of red brick and Broseley tiles, was designed, free of charge, by William Wilkinson, a local architect famous for designing the Randolph Hotel and much of North Oxford, and was built by Thomas Jones of George Street at a cost of £1075.
The care of the establishment was entrusted to John Rigaud and his brother, and Lewis Tuckwell, then curate of St Andrew’s Church, tells an amusing story about them in the early days in his book Old Magdalen Days (1913):
Mr Rigaud and his brother, the General, had the charge of the new Convalescent Home at Headington, committed to them by its founder, Mr Wingfield. The former of these two brothers was made the 'Minister of the Interior', the latter took the more congenial office of Head Gardener. In this capacity he would walk up each afternoon on a visit of inspection and being informed that it was advisable in a large garden to keep pigs, he bought a fine sow and expected that she would soon present him with a litter of youngsters. One evening, when it was my privilege to be in the Common Room, one of the Fellows accosted the General thus: 'Well, General, how are the pigs getting on?' In an aggrieved tone of voice he replied, 'The old brute has eaten all her little ones.' He had already mentioned to one or two friends that he was very partial to a sucking pig and that he was looking forward to the pleasure of inviting Dr Corfe to share one with him, and one of these friends who was then present shamefully betrayed his weakness, and took the part of the sow by saying, 'And no fool either, for she knew that the General would eat them if she didn't.'
In 1914 the Wingfield Convalescent Home was converted into a twenty-bed military hospital, and in 1918 the commandant of the hospital, Miss K. J. D. Feilden of High Wall, Pullen’s Lane, paid for additional buildings, and the site became the 100-bed Wingfield Hospital. The work of Gathorne Girdlestone led to its development as a specialist orthopaedic hospital, and in 1931 (after a gift of £70,000 from the then Sir William Morris) it was renamed the Wingfield-Morris Orthopaedic Hospital. The name was updated in 1950 to the Nuffield Orthopaedic Hospital.
Press cutting of 1872 about the opening of the Wingfield
Also see The Architect 7 (1872), 306.
An attempt to get the old Wingfield Convalescent Home listed has failed: the English Heritage inspector’s report of 3 June 2003 is given below (Case UID: 154583):
I have looked at all the papers on this file and other relevant information and have carefully considered the architectural and historic interest of this case. In my view the criteria for listing are not fulfilled.
The Wingfield Convalescent Home was built in 1872 to the designs of Oxford architect William Wilkinson. The Home originally accommodated eight patients, and was built in part to support Oxford’s Radcliffe Infirmary, from where patients could be moved to the Home to recover in a healthy environment before being fully discharged. The 1872 building is a two-storey house of red brick with simple black brick banding.
The 10-bay front has three gables and a canted projection to the far right. There may have been a verandah along the ground floor front, as described in the a contemporary Builder article, but this no longer survives. As the maps show, this building was incorporated into later developments on the site, and the former Home is now part of a quadrangle with the 1930s nurses' home. In 1916, a military hospital of wooden huts was built in the grounds, and none of these survive. This was replaced between 1931–9, as the Wingfield-Morris Orthopaedic Hospital, and these buildings now comprise much of the present site.
The incorporation of the 1872 Home into the 1930s developments altered the plan form of what was a discrete building comprising a main range with connecting wing to a smaller rear range. Only the main elevation survives as built in the 1870s. This elevation certainly has a domestic quality – convalescent homes were often intended to be non-institutional in style, to suit the more relaxed recovery they were to encourage – but it is relatively plain. The ground and first floor windows do not align, and the removal of the verandah has left only the simple banding and gables to break up the long facade. Wilkinson is an important C19 Oxford architect but this building does not live up to his skilful hand. The convalescent home as a building type was established in the mid-C19, with the 1840s Metropolitan Convalescent Institution. The type developed much more fully from the 1870s, often through philanthropy, which was the case at Wingfield. The Wingfield Home was therefore part of the early development of the building type, but it was not particularly innovative in a national context. Many of the late-C19 convalescent homes which are listed have particular architectural interest and completeness, such as the Gothic 1865–7 former Herbert Memorial Convalescent Home designed by T.H. Wyatt, the Italianate 1892 Pearn Convalescent Home, or the Gothic style 1861 former Home in Torquay by J.W. Rowell. The Wingfield Home lacks this kind of architectural interest to be considered special in a national context, and it does not have sufficient survival of original form; it is recommended as not listable.
Above: the old Wingfield Convalescent Home in May 2006, when it was serving as the site office for the redevelopment of the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre
Below: the left-hand side of the building waiting for its fate on 7 October 2007.
