More information : In 1825, the former St Katherine's Hospital building, on the site of St Katherine's Dock adjacent to the Tower, was bought up by the Dock Company and demolished to make way for their development. Ambrose Poynter, trained by Nash, was commissioned to build a new house in Regent's Park for the master, together with a chapel (now the Danish Church) and accomodation for the residents; these were to be selected by the royal appointment rather than the 2000 poor sheltered in the previous hospital. The gothic building, which was disliked by Nash, greatly exceded its projected cost and #15,000 had been spent on repairs by 1833. The building was known at first as The Master's House but by the end of the century was called St Katherine's Lodge.
The Royal Hospital was disbanded in 1914 and the house used as an officer's hospital throughout the First World War, after which it became a department of the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases. In 1944, the building was so badly damaged by a V1 rocket that it had to be demolished in 1948.
The building itself can be traced as a robber trench up to 0.2m deep, and the terrace in front of the house, though heavily disturbed, survives to a maximum height of 2.3m. Irregular linear banks along the original inner and outer boundaries of the property also survive, to maximum heights of 1.8m and 1.2m respectively. Some of the main earthworks were portrayed with reasonable accuracy on the Ordnance Survey Second and Third Editions. (1) |