York Historic Environment Record

Along with Verandah Cottages, Blue Beck House is one of few remaining buildings on the site of the now-demolished Clifton Hospital (of 1851, designed by George Gilbert Scott with William Bonython Moffatt, architects of national repute who worked prolifically in the asylum and workhouse fields). The wider, former hospital site is of importance due to it having been chosen for the new asylum as an airy, accessible site between Clifton Ings and Shipton Road, providing an extensive parkland setting. While the site has been lost due to extensive demolitions and unsympathetic redevelopment, the landscape of the site remains legible and distinctive in character; the extant buildings, including Blue Beck House, punctuate the landscape orientating and referencing the history of the site. Thought to have been the hospital's laundry, Blue Beck House was completed in 1891-7. The upper floors housed female inmates who worked in the laundry on the ground floor. Blue Beck House has intrinsic architectural quality which merits conservation. Designed by the firm of George Fowler Jones of York in red brick under slate roofs, the building adopts the English domestic revival architectural style, exemplified in its extensive stone dressings; mullion and transom windows with cast iron lights; timbered gables and attic storey to the hipped tower; and leaded ventilation cupola. The design and construction of the building is of high quality, great character, and possesses significant aesthetic design values; historical illustrative and associated values relating to its historic function and association with the hospital and Fowler Jones; and communal heritage values relating to the historic and current uses for health services. (http://www.yorklocallist.org.uk)

The building was recorded ahead of demolition in October 2022. The boiler house and part of the NE side were demolished in the '90s to make a car park.
External alterations were limited comprising mostly inserted doorways including fire exits.
However, the east side of the northern elevation had been modified and refaced externally with later brickwork, following the demolition of a primary northeast wing in the 1990s. Internally, the merged ranges had been substantially altered from their original design as later refurbishments and the introduction of modern equipment contributed to the loss of primary fixtures and fittings. Secondary large spaces had been created with the removal of walls, and insertion of RSJ and/or concrete beams. Other alterations included insertion of doorways, stud walls, carpeted and linoleum floors, suspended false ceilings, replacement of doors, etc.; as well as installing modern utility services. (York Archaeology 2023).

York Archaeology, 2023, Blue Beck House (Unpublished document). SYO2969.