By NOEL MURPHY
BARWON Health’s original Geelong Kitchener Memorial Hospital building might now be gone but its foundation stone – laid by Dame Nellie Melba – has been retrieved.
The foundation stone is inscribed with the name of Dame Nellie’s four-year-old granddaughter, Pamela Armstrong’s, and was laid in 1923.
According to the National Trust’s Jennifer Bantow, illness prevented Pamela’s attendance.
Barwon Health is set to unveil the foundation stone, along with a time capsule unearthed during the stone’s removal and demolition of the original building, at a later date.
The building was Geelong Hospital’s second after the first opened in 1852 as Geelong Infirmary and Benevolent Asylum.
Ms Bantow said the stone was one of five laid in different but stylistically-linked buildings.
“It would be good to conserve the foundation stone,” she said.
“The building was originally a surgical ward, particularly significant at the time for its ventilation and surrounding open verandahs.
“It was possibly one of the last examples of the style of post-World War 1 hospitals built throughout the British Empire.”
Ms Bantow said architecturally-interesting concrete columns from within the building deserved conservation.
The columns and foundation stone could form a feature within the garden area of the new complex taking the building’s place, she said.
“These internal columns in the ward and some larger matching ones, which originally formed a pedestrian colonnade between 16 buildings, from the most easterly on Swanston Street to the most westerly, the nurses’ home on Bellerine Street, are in good condition and the proportions are quite strikingly beautiful.”
A spokesperson said Barwon Health would host an “event” in coming months “once we have had the items preserved for the reveal of the time capsule”.
