Longmore House

File:Longmore House - geograph.org.uk - 452617.jpg

Longmore House, the head office of Historic Scotland.

Historic Scotland offices in Edinburgh

Longmore House, formerly Longmore Hospital, on Salisbury Place, Newington, Edinburgh, is the headquarters of Historic Scotland. Together with the associated mortuary and chapel (connected to the main building by an underground tunnel), boundary walls, gatepiers and railings, the property is designated a Category B listed building. The separate nurses' residence, on Salisbury Road, now converted to flats, is also Category B listed.

The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh did not have facilities to care for the chronically ill. The Edinburgh Association for the Relief of Incurables, using a £10,000 bequest from the Edinburgh solicitor John Longmore of Deanhaugh, bought 8 Salisbury Place and opened it as a hospital in 1875. The Association then purchased 9 and 10 Salisbury Place and commissioned a new hospital for the site, to a neoclassical design by John More Dick Peddie. The new 3-storey Longmore Hospital opened on 10 December 1880. Extensions, also designed by Dick Peddie, were built to the east (1886-91) and to the west (1899), on the site of a row of villas, including the former Wilson's Academy.

In 1903 the Edinburgh Association for Incurables received a royal charter. In 1906 Liberton Hospital opened, and the 2 hospitals together were known as the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Incurables (REHI). In 1948 the hospital was taken over by the Scottish National Health Service.

Longmore Hospital closed in 1991, with services, including breast cancer diagnosis and care, being transferred to the Western General Hospital. Historic Scotland moved to the converted and extended property in 1994.

See also

• List of hospitals in Scotland