Newcastle Infirmary
Location type
Name and dates
Newcastle Infirmary (1753-1906)Description
The Newcastle Infirmary was to the west of the cattle market, The 'Forth' and the west side of the town wall.
Newcastle [Shot Tower], the original terminus of the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway was opened to its south west.
The railway was soon to have a direct impact on the infirmary as George Hume's The History of the Newcastle Infirmary explains
As the century grew to be middle-aged, the Governors must have seen a wonderful change taking place in the neighbourhood of the Infirmary. In 1830 the enclosure of the Forth Walk still existed, and most of the town
wall from the West Gate to the Close was still standing. In the twenty years which follows, the old landmarks and open spaces disappeared, and the chief agent which produced the change was the railway. The first record of the Infirmary coming into contract with its new neighbour refers to a meeting of the House Committee with the directors of the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway, on the 7th of January 1840, with a view to negotiating an exchange of ground. It was the first of many similar meetings and negotiations, which are not east to follow
to any definite ending. They refer first of all the the approaches to the station house, to the west of the Infirmary ground; then to the filling up of the dene in the Infirmary garden; and later, in 1844, to ground required for the continuation of the line of railway to the intended station in Neville Street, The Infirmary,
apart from these negotiations, did not find their encroaching neighbour a pleasant associate. Complaints of the condition of fences and of drains pass from the one to the other; and in one communication the attention of the directors is drawn to a grievance which it has never found in their power to abate. They are begged to give attention "to the desirability of deadening the noise from the engine crossing the public road below the Infirmary, as the Committee understand this can be effected by using felt or other material in such places."
In 1846 the Forth Banks Viaduct was to open on the southern margin of the infirmary's grounds. Newcastle [Forth] was to open the following year and Newcastle Central used the same approach in 1851.
The hospital was relocated in 1906 becoming the Royal Victoria Infirmary. The site is now the Life Science Centre .
