The Dispensary is a Georgian town house which is fairly typical of many town-centre houses in

Monmouth Monmouth ( , ; cy, Trefynwy meaning "town on the Monnow") is a town and community in Wales. It is situated where the River Monnow joins the River Wye, from the Wales–England border. Monmouth is northeast of Cardiff, and west of London. I ...

, Wales, dating from the mid 18th century, but with early 19th-century additions. It stands in St James Square, opposite the

Catalpa tree ''Catalpa'', commonly called catalpa or catawba, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Bignoniaceae, native to warm temperate and subtropical regions of North America, the Caribbean, and East Asia. Description Most ''Catalpa'' are decidu ...

. The building was listed at Grade II on 27 June 1952.Old Dispensary
Listed Buildings, accessed January 2010 The architectural historian John NewmanNewman, John (2000) ''The Buildings of Wales: Gwent/Monmouthshire''. .

University of Wales Press The University of Wales Press ( cy, Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru) was founded in 1922 as a central service of the University of Wales. The press publishes academic journals and around seventy books a year in the English and Welsh languages on six general ...

calls this the "one substantial eighteenth century house" in St James Street, though it is surrounded by later attractive façades. A

dispensary A dispensary is an office in a school, hospital, industrial plant, or other organization that dispenses medications, medical supplies, and in some cases even medical and dental treatment. In a traditional dispensary set-up, a pharmacist dispen ...

was established here in 1857. This became the Monmouth Hospital and Dispensary, with nine beds, in 1868, and closed in 1903. The dispensary is one of 24 buildings on the

Monmouth Heritage Trail The Monmouth Heritage Trail is a walking route which connects various sights in the town of Monmouth, Wales. History In 2009 Monmouth Civic Society identified 24 historic and interesting buildings in the town, and organised the production and fix ...

, marked by a ceramic

blue plaque A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving as a historical marker. The term i ...

on the wall.

History

A dispensary had been set up at Little Castle House, Castle Hill, in 1810, but it moved to St James Square in 1868 where it became the town's hospital, funded by local benefactors.

Sir James Paget Sir James Paget, 1st Baronet FRS HFRSE (11 January 1814 – 30 December 1899) (, rhymes with "gadget") was an English surgeon and pathologist who is best remembered for naming Paget's disease and who is considered, together with Rudolf Virch ...

(Surgeon Extraordinary to Queen Victoria), who inspected the premises in 1873, said it was one of "the most convenient and best ventilated and arranged Institutions he had ever seen". It mainly benefitted the poor although it was the deserving poor as those on parish-relief were given a low priority. The Dispensary served as a cottage hospital, except that cases involving childbirth, hospice cases and those with mental diseases were turned away. The annual cost of each bed in 1868 was about £40; this was raised by donations made at Monmouth's banks or directly at the Dispensary. The waiting room displayed the names of major benefactors, which included a gift of £1,000 from John E. W. Rolls (a grandfather of

Charles Rolls Charles Stewart Rolls (27 August 1877 – 12 July 1910) was a British motoring and aviation pioneer. With Henry Royce, he co-founded the Rolls-Royce car manufacturing firm. He was the first Briton to be killed in an aeronautical accident with ...

), who was President of the Institution. Rolls covered the cost of "The Hendre Bed" in perpetuity. The number of outpatients treated in 1876–1877 was over 1600; there were 60 inpatients. The Dispensary's catchment area extended to about eight miles outside Monmouth, including part of the

Forest of Dean The Forest of Dean is a geographical, historical and cultural region in the western part of the county of Gloucestershire, England. It forms a roughly triangular plateau bounded by the River Wye to the west and northwest, Herefordshire to the n ...

.Kissack, K. (1975) ''Monmouth – the Making of a County Town''. Phillimore Press The lack of an operating room and the difficult stairs at the Dispensary had convinced the authorities that a new hospital was essential and this led to the Dispensary's closure. The Hospital moved from St James Square in 1903 to the Cottage Hospital on the Hereford Road.Alan Sutton Publishing, ''Monmouth and the River Wye in Old Photographs'', Alan Sutton Publishing, 1989, , page 16 In 1907, the ''French Sisters'' were running a private school in the old dispensary building, offering both boarders and day pupils lessons in French, music, painting, drawing, needlework and general education. Soon afterwards, a children's home was established here, a use which continued up to the end of the twentieth century.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dispensary, Monmouth Grade II listed buildings in Monmouthshire Buildings and structures in Monmouth, Wales