The new billboards depicting Barts’ history in King Edward Street were created in conjunction with the Museum of London

On Saturday 28 September 2013 my friend Katie Chamber, who works at Centre of the Cell, a medical educational centre, and I had an interesting and informative tour of St Bartholomew's Hospital Phase 2 construction site lead by Ian Dodds, Project Director and Kieran O’Halloran, Senior Project Manager, who are both members of staff from Skanska.

St Bartholomew’s Hospital, known as Barts, dates back to 1123 when Rahere, a courtier of Henry I, founded the hospital and a nearby Augustinian priory.  It is the oldest hospital in London that still stands on its original site.

The view of courtyard from the Cardiac & Cancer Care Centre

The hospital was re-built round an attractive open courtyard by James Gibbs in the1700s. Although currently used as a car park the area will be closed to cars, landscaped and turned into a pedestrianised central square. The work will include the restoration of a fountain, street lamps and the facades of the surrounding buildings. The new building incorporates the original facade of the 1930s King George V block, the previous building on this site, on the south east corner of the square.

Computer generated image of the Cardiac & Cancer Care Centre’s entrance from the billboard in King Edward Street

The current construction of an 8 storey Cardiac and Cancer Care Centre is being undertaken by Skanska. The project was started in 2006 and has been built in two phases to enable the hospital to remain operational while the building work is in progress. Phase I was completed and became operational in 2010 with Phase II due to be completed by 2014. The project has involved the demolition of some of the existing buildings on the site, while the listed buildings are being retained and refurbished. The architects are HOK.

 Cardiac & Cancer Care Centre’s entrance on King Edward Street

The construction work presented a number of challenges for Skanska. The new building is surrounded by other buildings so noisy work was scheduled around less busy times to minimise the disturbance for its neighbours. Also to blend in with its historic surroundings the building was clad in Portland stone and due to its location within the St Paul’s protected viewing corridor it was restricted to a maximum of 8 storeys high.

Critical Care Unit with central docking station

The new hospital uses state of the art technology. The critical care unit has been designed with patient safety and comfort in mind. The large open plan design makes it easy to transport a patient after surgery from the operating theatre to a space beside on one the central docking stations.

Computer generated image of the Cardiac & Cancer Care Centre’s atrium from the billboard in King Edward Street

Current view of the atrium

The central atrium is still under construction and connects Phase I and Phase II buildings. This light and spacious area will provide a waiting area and café.

Atrium roof

Visiting the atrium and seeing its attractive checker board pattern roof was my favourite part of the tour. The ETFE foil roof designed by Architen Landrell is of a special lightweight construction. There are three layers and when air pressure is added to the top layer the foil separates and increases the amount light to pass through the space between the squares. When air pressure is added to the bottom layer the squares come together and reduce the amount of light coming into the building.

Although only in its second year, for those in the know, Open Doors weekend is quickly gathering the momentum and following in the footsteps of the well established Open House weekend with both schemes providing opportunities to visits places normally closed to the general public. Open Doors was launched in 2012 and it enables members of the public to visit working constructions sites across England, Scotland and Wales. It’s a fantastic opportunity to visit a building even before it’s completed. All the events arranged are free of charge but all the tours required pre-booking and very quickly became fully booked. Last year I visited Tottenham Court Road Station and you can read more about it in my blog.

For more details see the Open Doors Weekend website. 

If you enjoyed this you might like reading my blog about other construction projects.

The author of this blog is a qualified City of London and City of Westminster Tour Guide who leads guided walks combining world famous landmarks with hidden treasures often missed by the crowds.

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