History:
The Herbert Hospital is an exemplar scheme for Florence Nightingales' ideas on pavilion hospitals that she explained in 'Notes on Hospitals' that was published in 1863. The sanitarian reformers were convinced of the need to better ventilate the hospital buildings to improve health outcomes and Nightingale set out the requirements for the optimum hospital plan. These were supported by other theories from medical doctors such as Aitken and Pringle. The pavilion plan was very influential in the 19th century because of the publicity and the size and scale of the commissions that adopted these ideas.
The Herbert Hospital closed during the 1980s and has now been converted into private residential accommodation.



Architecture:
Designed bin 1861-5 by Captain Douglas Galton RE, the Herbert Hospital plan consisted of four double and three single pavilions. It differs from the French Laboisire / Bordeaux format in that the spine is a wide cross ventilated communication corridor and not an arcaded court with pavilions on one or both sides. In the French examples the main entrance is on the centreline at one end of the court with significant ancillary buildings at the far end. For the English version, the preference is to put the entrance at the cross axis on the centre point of the corridor spine, and here the admin buildings, kitchen, dining, chapel are grouped with formal entrance through the front admin building.
However, the essential overlaps between the pavilion plans in both France and England relates to the ward plan. It is essentially based on a series of dormitory blocks linked to a circulation spine. The dormitories house the beds in an open plan ward with sanitary accommodation at one end and nurses accommodation at the other. Treatments and administrative tasks were located in the centre of the dormitory. One of the reasons for the success of the plan was that it was easily adapted to different circumstances, could be developed in different architectural styles and that it was in the spirit of the interest in public health reform.