page_title: Royal Hamadryad Hospital
section_title: Permanent facility
hierarchical_section_title: Royal Hamadryad Hospital / History / Permanent facility
caption_attribution_description: English: Royal Hamadryad Hospital, Cardiff Docks, opened in 1905 as a Seamans' hospital.
context_page_description: The Royal Hamadryad Hospital was a seamen's hospital and later a psychiatric hospital in the docklands area of Cardiff, Wales. It had replaced a hospital ship, the former HMS Hamadryad, in 1905. After it closed in 2002 the site was redeveloped for residential use.
context_section_description: To mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897, a decision was made to build a permanent bricks-and-mortar seamen's hospital close to the site of the hospital ship. By that time 10,000 seamen (in-patients and out-patients) were being treated each year. The Marquis of Bute, on his death in 1900, bequeathed £20,000 towards the cost of the new building and this was augmented by additional subscriptions of £12,000 and the proceeds of a bazaar, which raised £4,400. A brand new hospital building was constructed in red brick, stone and terracotta immediately to the west of the ship site, designed by E.W.M. Corbett, the architect of the Marquis of Bute's estates. The architectural historian John Newman described the design as "An ebullient performance in [Corbett's] favourite Queen-Anne-cum-Jacobean style". The foundation stone was laid on 7 August 1902 by the 4th Marquess of Bute, son of the testator. Named the Royal Hamadryad Hospital, the new building was opened by the Marquess on 29 June 1905.
  The hospital had 54 beds, electric lighting and x-ray facilities. It remained a seamen's hospital (one of only two in Britain offering free treatment exclusively to seafarers) until 1948. Following the formation of the National Health Service it became a general hospital and then a psychiatric facility.
  After the remaining 30 mental health patients had been transferred to the newly-opened St David's Hospital in Canton, the hospital was finally closed in 2002.
caption: Royal Hamadryad Hospital, rear view (2007)
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