Harriet Richardson Blakeman
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harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
Harriet Richardson Blakeman
@harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
1.8K followers 400 following 300 posts
Architectural historian, formerly at the Survey of London, long standing interest in hospital buildings. University of Edinburgh PhD ‘Medicine and Modernity’. Living in Scotland.
Website: https://historic-hospitals.com/
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harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
Bumper crop of apples this year, for us and the rest of Europe, probably. Picked as many as we could before storm Amy arrived to give a helping hand.
A corner of our kitchen, with bowls of apples on the table and more on the windowsill.
October 4, 2025 at 4:35 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
Cat on a hot concrete step
#caturday
Black and white cat lying in the sun on step. Patio and garden beyond.
August 16, 2025 at 4:10 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
Mystery Chapel:
Does anyone recognise this chapel? It is most likely in the South East of England, might be a hospital or institutional chapel, and was photographed in the 1950s. The photographer was a TB patient around this time, from St Paul's Cray and latterly at Eversfield Hospital, Hastings.
photo of a smallish chapel, simple gothic style, probably brick with small fleche, roughly three bay nave, with twin lancet windows separated by buttresses, and broader chancel end with triple lancet window in centre.
August 1, 2025 at 9:12 AM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
A recent week's holiday on Orkney included a tour of the surviving historic hospitals in Kirkwall.

https://historic-hospitals.com/2025/07/06/orkney-revisited/
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July 6, 2025 at 10:46 AM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
The comet stone, Ness of Brodgar, Orkney. Unlike the nearby Ring of Brodgar, here we were not swamped by the coach parties, and were able to get up close to the stone.
Snapped on 17 June early afternoon.
#StandingStoneSunday
Photograph of the so-called comet stone near the Ring of Brodgar (just visible in the distance where the stones rise up above the horizon). Tufts of long grass surround the base of the stone, which is seen here at a slight angle showing its fissured side. The stone is an upright oblong with its upper edge sloping at roughly 45 degrees. View of the stone flat on, where the upper sloping edge appears less obvious, but fissures or cut marks angled down across the top right-hand corner are the chief feature - along with the colourful lichens in ochre, white and dark grey. View of loch and distant shore behind. detail of that fissured top right-hand-corner, focusing on the lichens. The north side of the stone, showing its top left-hand corner. Here the lichens seem to grown in slanting strips, with greenish ones occupying the top corner, then a patch of the fluffy grey-green kind you usually see on tree branches, then a strip of the ochre-coloured one, followed by white in the bottom section. Patch of blue sky beyond.
June 29, 2025 at 10:15 AM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
Former Stromness Soda Fountain, coffee saloon and ice-cream parlour, Victoria Street.
'Ice cream sold ... in any quantities, large or small. Made by an electric machine of new design.'
Now the most fabulous shop selling woolly things and more.
#shopfronts #Orkney #Stromness
photograph of the former coffee saloon on Victoria Street in Stromness, Orkney, with the shops to either side and the distinctive road surface of stone slabs on either side of a narrow band of setts. The shop and its neighbour have their gable ends facing the street. The former coffee salon has 'coffee saloon' in mosaic tiles above the plate-glass windows. detail of the former soda fountain shopfront, showing the curved corner entrance and window to side, both have mosaic panels over, the facing of the rest of the ground-floor is of black terazzo-type finish. Upper floors harled. Within the shop was this framed poster announcing the opening of the new Soda Fountain coffee saloon in Victoria Street. G. Fugaccia, Proprietor - the proprietor's name was also in the entrance hearth in mosaic tiles. View of the interior of the shop, showing some of the mosaic decoration set in the terrazzo floor - geometric designs with leaf or floral motifs in slate grey edging, orange and olive grey. Racks of jumpers and jackets, hooks with colourful bags.
June 28, 2025 at 10:45 AM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
'Caution Unstable Cliff'
Just back from a week on Orkney. Here a view of Churchill Barrier number one, from Lamb Holm (taken from outside the Italian Chapel).
photograph looking towards the Churchill barrier that links Orkney mainland with the island of Lamb Holm, on which stands the Italian Chapel. White sand of beach to left of barrier, scrubby grass in the foreground and small sign warning of unstable cliff. Big sky, mostly cloudy, but with enough blue to make a pair of sailor's trousers ... as the saying goes.
June 27, 2025 at 1:29 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
Arrived today! Looking very smart, lots of great photos, and I know it will be an excellent read. Congratulation to @kathrynmorrison.bsky.social
Cover of new book on Chain stores in the Golden Age of the British High Street. With black and white cover photo of Mansfield, West Gate, with Woolworth’s store and M&S.
June 5, 2025 at 1:56 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
Trip out to Rosslyn Chapel, already heaving on wild and windy Monday morning. Took advantage of the quiet outside while the talk was in progress inside. Very different experience from my first visit in the mid-1980s.
South front of the diminutive chapel. Mottled stone, mostly yellowy, with red and darker grey/brown patches. Crocketed pinnacles rise from the buttresses, flying at clerestory level. South door protected by a porch View of the chapel from the north east. A riot of jagged pinnacles atop the buttresses. View of the chapel from the south west, with the remains of the south transept to the right, and later baptistery added in 1880 projecting from the west end. Another view of the south front, with the stub of the transept on the left.
June 5, 2025 at 9:56 AM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
Latest blog post. A roundup of May News from Historic Hospitals, on Margate, Letchworth and Guy Dawber in Cockermouth.

https://historic-hospitals.com/2025/05/24/may-news/
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May 24, 2025 at 11:51 AM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
Yet more from #Margate - and also for #IronworkThursday
Rusting railings at the old winter gardens, along Fort Promenade.
Section of rusted railings, with remnants of blue paint. Decorative ironwork, with scrolls top and bottom. Glimpse of the sea beyond. Detail of panel in the rusted ironwork railings, the scrolls have made way for a short section of Greek key, and the central panel has an oval on an elongated X. Sea beyond. Fort promenade, where it crosses the flat roof of the building at the end of the former winter garden. In the distance Fort Paragon terrace, four-storey terrace of houses built c.1830
May 22, 2025 at 12:23 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
More from Margate.
Arlington House, the only really tall building in the town, with appropriately wavy frontages. Russell Diplock Associates, architects, completed 1963. #Margate
18-storey block of flats, concrete and glass 1960s modernist/Brutalist style. The 17 floors of flats have horizontal bands of windows but with a gentle zig-zag forming that breaks up the main elevations into four tall bays.
May 21, 2025 at 4:29 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
A return to Margate at the weekend and my first visit to Dreamland.
The Dreamland cinema Margate, Art-Deco in Dutch-style rich brown brick, with tall fin-shaped tower, shorter tower to left with illuminated sign board. The swing-seat carousel, in action. Beautifully painted carousel, with a cream background decorated with fans of elongated lozenges - sorry, hard to describe, in shades of blue red and green, some making a fan shape others a star. entrance to the funfair at Dreamland, with the big wheel in the background, the entrance is framed by two stands, the left one taller and with a jumble of signage and ornament including a large red plastic devil. There's a stall just past the entrance with red and yellow striped canopy over. Lots of bright primary colours.
May 21, 2025 at 12:22 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
Salins-Les-Bains, Jura, France. Made me smile this morning when it popped up on my screen, so thought I would share the joy of the curvaceous doorway.
Photo of a building on one of the main streets through the small town, showing the wide front door and parts of the window on each side and above. Grey stone, door and ground floor windows with shallow arched heads, carved surrounds. Door as has a curved Doric frieze and cornice. Decorative wooden doors with carved panels.
May 3, 2025 at 8:21 AM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
#WorldArtDecoDay
Carron restaurant and tea room, 1937, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire.
Single-storey, flat-roofed building with curved fronted veranda, pea-green coloured window frames to cafe behind also with a bowed front in centre. Terrace in front with curved steps leading down to lawn, bounded by black painted railings with subtle jazz styling.
April 28, 2025 at 7:12 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
Excited to discover that the cottage hospital in Cockermouth was designed by Guy Dawber (blt 1915). It doesn't seem to have been widely known that he was the architect. A shame, or it might not have been demolished. It went some time after 2009 having been damaged in the terrible floods that year.
The best image I've found online, showing what can be seen of the cottage hospital from the road. A low-slung, single storey building of white-painted render (probably), with slate roof, deepish eaves, and three dormer windows. Photo from the website Geograph, with creative commons licence. Photographed in 2007 ©️ Alexander P. Kapp.
April 28, 2025 at 4:24 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
A brief look at the derivation of the naming of Hospital Street in Glasgow and hospitals that are not hospitals in the medical sense. Also a little something for #MapMonday

https://historic-hospitals.com/2025/04/21/when-is-a-hospital-not-a-hospital/
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April 21, 2025 at 12:46 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
More from the 1950s scrapbook, this one a mystery to me. One for @seasideferry.bsky.social perhaps? It looks to me like a double-decker seafront sitooterie.
Unidentified photo taken around 1953 on the cost showing a two storey structure against a high stone wall with open front, forming a veranda with balcony above, both with bench seats and people sitting in them. Detail of the previous photo, zooming in on the sitooterie. There seem to be two boy scouts in the foreground on a bridge?
April 19, 2025 at 3:15 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
This is the page with the Queen's Beasts, from a scrapbook of photos mostly from 1953-4, all tiny 2-inch square images (about 5.5cm).
A page from a scrapbook with four small photos of the Queen's Beasts and the building that they ornamented, a temporary annexe to Westminster Abby for the Queen's coronation in 1953. My mother has drawn a ribbon to link the photos, and a banner at the top labelled 'The Queen's Beasts'.
April 19, 2025 at 2:14 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
I didn't know about the Queen's Beasts, commissioned for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II from James Woodford, of RIBA bronze doors fame. Came across these photos taken by my mother in 1953.
a Festival of Britain style, boxy building with tall windows above which are coats of arms. On a plinth in front of the building are perched statues of heraldic beasts. A London bus passing in the distance and a few people milling about in front of the building.. Detailed view looking along the line of the beasts. View of part of the unicorn and Griffon? behind. Another detail of one of the sculptures, possibly a griffon, and part of the sign about 'visitors to the abbey'.
April 19, 2025 at 2:06 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
It is ten years since I first launched the Historic Hospitals Website. It continues to grow, and this month I have had some interesting enquiries and done a little bit of revision to the pages on Cumbria and Devon.

https://historic-hospitals.com/2025/04/18/april-news/
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April 18, 2025 at 12:18 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
Two years ago I went off for an x-ray on my knee at Kings Cross Hospital Dundee - and an opportunity for some fieldwork. It was originally built as the city's infectious diseases hospital, opened 1890, now mostly a range of clinics and admin offices. 📷 30 March 2023
#Dundee
Admin block of the hospital, two storey and attic with three-storey entrance bay - rising to a square section tower with pyramidal roof. Vaguely Jacobethan in style, in sandstone with canted bay windows, gables to outer bays of a seven bay front. A bit lumpen but handsome enough. Perhaps the jolliest bit of the original hospital, a detail of the link corridors between the wards and admin block, single-storey glazed corridors, with slate pitched roofs, at the right-angled junction between two corridors an octagonal (?) section with some fine ironwork on its roof. There are a couple of tall pine trees near by too. Detail of the cast (?) iron fencing round on the Clepington Road side of the hospital, with one of the repeated decorative panels featuring scrolls and flower motifs.
March 28, 2025 at 4:48 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
Post a warning.
Glasgow’s Wesyern Infirmary, late 1980s, with some mixed messaging about parking. Dangerous structure:disabled parking.
March 23, 2025 at 6:49 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
This month I have been mostly revising and adding to the existing pages of the historic-hospitals website. In this post I cover some recent work on Northern Ireland and Staffordshire, and a newly acquired aerial photo of a former isolation…

https://historic-hospitals.com/2025/03/21/march-news/
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March 21, 2025 at 12:38 PM
harrietrichardsonb.bsky.social
Disastrous announcement of massive job losses at the University of Dundee. I have benefitted from the expertise and helpfulness of the University's archivists, in the basement of R. Matthew's Tower Building. 'The most fully developed example of Matthew's rubbly, timber-clad Modernity of the 1950s'.
University of Dundee Tower Building, Robert Matthew 1957-8, ten-storey tower block with two to four storey buildings at its foot, rubble-stone cladding to part, timber to rest, set against a blue sky. Photographed November 2020 approach to Dundee University Tower with detail of the lower two and three storey blocks to the east. Similar mix of rubble-stone and timber cladding.
March 11, 2025 at 2:46 PM