The Imperial War Museum

(Previously the Royal Bethlehem Hospital, or "Bedlam")

James Lewis, 1815

Important additions by Sydney Smirke, 1835-1846.

Lambeth Road, London

Photograph and text 2008 by Jacqueline Banerjee

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL.]

The original building on this site was designed by James Lewis, the hospital surveyor for the old Bethlehem Royal Hospital at Moorfields. However, his design was based on prize-winning plans submitted by other architects, the best of which were by John Gandy (later known as John Deering). The asylum was completed in 1815, but soon proved inadequate. After the initial transfer of 122 patients, blocks were added in the very next year for the criminally insane. The building was greatly enlarged by Sydney Smirke from 1835 onwards. Smirke provided wings on either side (since demolished) and galleried blocks at the rear; he also enlarged the original low cupola into a tall copper-covered dome, mainly, it seems, to help extend the space in the chapel beneath it. Smirke is sometimes said to have added the imposing portico as well (e.g., see Weinreb and Hibbert, 62); but Gandy had proposed a "pediment supported by six Doric columns" (Darlington): it is the type of structure to be seen at University College London, for which he also submitted plans, and on which he worked with William Wilkins. The portico can be seen on Thomas Shepherd's steel engraving of the Royal Bethlehem Hospital in 1828, long before Smirke started work on the building.

Sadly, A.W. N. Pugin, who designed St George's Roman Catholic Cathedral diagonally opposite the hospital building, was confined here for a while in 1852 — though he was later moved, and died at home in Ramsgate later that year.

In Ida Darlington's chapter on this building, the tall dome is criticised; but it is a familiar landmark in this part of London. The chapter concludes with a brief history of the building's later use:

The central portion of the front, with the dome looking disproportionately high above it, and the rear galleries were leased to the Commissioners of Works to house the Imperial War Museum. The building, which was opened to the public in 1936, was damaged considerably by bombs in 1940, 1941, and 1944, but by 1946 was sufficiently repaired for the museum to be re-opened. It is perhaps appropriate that a building occupied for so many years by men and women of unsound mind should now be used to house exhibits of that major insanity of our own time, war.

Sadly again, the comment on the building's appropriateness for its present purpose is still timely.

Note

For Shepherd's 1828 engraving of the hospital, see here.

References

Darlington, Ida, ed. "Bethlem Hospital, Now the Imperial War Museum, in Lambeth Road." Survey of London, Vol. 25. Viewed 15 May 2008.

Wedgwood, Alexandra. "Pugin, Augustus Welby Northmore (1812-1852)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Viewed 14 May 2008.

Weinreb, Ben and Christopher Hibbert, eds. The London Encyclopaedia. London: Macmillan, rev. ed. 1992.

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Last modified 15 May 2008