The Chapel at Former Holloway Sanatorium Virginia Water, Victorian psychiatric hospital in Virginia Water, Surrey
The Chapel at Former Holloway Sanatorium stands in Virginia Water and belongs to a Victorian psychiatric hospital now converted into apartments. The chapel shows Gothic pointed arches, colored glass windows, and a high vaulted ceiling supported by slender columns.
Thomas Holloway founded the sanatorium in the 1870s as a private clinic meant to work according to modern principles of psychiatry. The chapel arose together with the main building and served patients and staff as a place for worship and reflection.
The name comes from Thomas Holloway, a philanthropist who built this facility for middle-income people who had limited access to mental health care at the time. The architecture was meant to create a healing environment by bringing beauty and dignity into the treatment of mental illness.
The chapel sits inside a private residential complex, so access for visitors is restricted. It helps to contact ahead or visit on special open days when the building is opened to the public.
The architect William Henry Crossland designed the chapel after French models and used elements from the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. This blend of continental Gothic with English brickwork was uncommon for the period and gives the chapel a special character.
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