You wouldn’t think it when visiting it these days, with its views out across the Solent and its rolling lawns and woodland, but the Royal Victoria Country Park once housed the longest building in the world. These days almost all that remains of the former Royal Victoria Hospital is its chapel, but when it was built to tend to soldiers in the Crimean War (and those after it) it would have been an impressive structure along the shoreline. Indeed, that very fact caused some problems with a certain famous nurse of the era, but more of that further on.
In 2011 when we walked around the Royal Victoria Country Park we had a clear, fresh November day as our company. Hazy views across to the refinery and the numerous and varied sorts of boats and ships passing up and down the busy waterway greeted us on arrival.
Other than the sea views south of Royal Victoria Country Park, what you’re mostly going to see here is pleasant parkland, trees, shrubs, and lawns. But there is also a prominent building. As mentioned already, this is the Royal Victoria Hospital Chapel, most of all that remains of that structure.
The hospital, as you might gather from its name, was a Victorian edifice, owing its origin to Queen Victoria herself following a visit to Chatham Barracks and seeing the prison-like conditions that the soldiers were treated in. In this she had support from Florence Nightingale and prime minister Lord Palmerston. The first stone was laid by Victoria herself in 1856, and under it a time capsule with the plans, coins, and both a Victoria Cross and a Crimea Medal.
When completed, the hospital was four hundred and thirty five metres long with one hundred and thirty eight wards and in excess of a thousand beds. However, Florence Nightingale had not been involved in the early design process, only becoming aware of them while it was underway, and she wasn’t happy with what she saw. Far from the bright, airy wards she’d recommended with lots of light and a segregation of different types of illnesses and treatments to prevent cross-contamination, the building was constructed around small, tight wards with no views towards the sea but instead to the northern aspect, all connected by one long corridor, and seemingly designed to look impressive from the sea rather than serve the practical purpose it should have been built for. A Manchester surgeon also made it public that he considered more disease would be created than cured as a result of the design. Nightingale brought the matter to Lord Palmerston and he moved the matter on to the Secretary of State for War, Lord Panmure. Who initially did nothing. Eventually, though, a letter was delivered by London doctors stating they could not approve of the design, a question was raised in Parliament, and all work ceased on the hospital until some modifications could be pushed through the legal channels. It still wasn’t what Nightingale wanted nor did it match the superior designs in use on the continent, but it was an improvement.
Whew!
The building served roles as hospital and as barracks then right through to the Second World War when US soldiers used it as a base ahead of the D-Day landings. In the early 1960s, however, a fire broke out and most of the site was demolished. The same fate would have befallen the chapel but it was saved, given listed status, and instead restored as a monument to what had been there before.
You can visit the chapel and even get to the top of the tower these days. I’m not sure that we could when we visited, but I know that we didn’t.
A cash-only (at time of visiting and apparently now still at time of writing) steam railway operates at Royal Victoria Country Park and it’s a very relaxing way to trundle through a couple of kilometres of the landscape.
Photos and history! I’ve been spoiling you today!
If you’re ever in the area then this is a great little place to explore and there are more things to do than simply walk around and ride on the train as we did. Also of interest in the area, and very close by – indeed, we visited it on the same day – are the ruins of Netley Abbey.