Mater Infirmorum Hospital - History

History

The Mater Infirmorum (Mother of the Sick) Hospital has been serving the people of Belfast since it admitted its first patients on 1 November 1883, in premises on the Crumlin Road in Belfast, known as Bedeque House. It was initially founded by the Sisters of Mercy but has always treated patients without regard to class or creed.

The hospital is situated in the middle of one of the more economically and socially deprived areas of Belfast, though not far from the city centre. It lies in the middle of lesser well-off populations which for years had been distinguished from each other as having predominantly either Roman Catholic or Protestant. The Mater Hospital has often been caught up in community tensions since the 1970s. It draws patients and staff from all areas of the population and maintains close links with local people. Belfast has been a popular destination in recent years for foreign nurses to come and settle and work for short and long periods and for life.

The main hospital opened in 1900. In 1909 the Mater Hospital was officially recognised as a university teaching hospital and is still associated with and receives students from the Queen's University Medical School.

The hospital required a major refurbishment to bring it up to modern standards. As the first phase of a modernisation programme, a new ward block and day procedures unit was built at the rear of the present block, at a cost of £15 million. This cost was fully met by a generous contribution from the charitable funds of the YP Trustees, who have long association with the Mater.

In 1945 the first Mater Maternity Unit opened, caring for nineteen mothers and their babies. Then, in 1952, the first Neuropsychiatry department opened based in an acute Hospital. The Hospital became fully integrated into the National Health Service in 1972.

Today, it is one of the biggest employers in North Belfast with over 1000 staff, and is fully integrated into the Health Service of Northern Ireland with its own Trust Board of Management.

Architecturally, the hospital is housed in a mixture of historic and recent buildings. The older parts, like much of the remaining older architecture in Belfast, are of designs characteristic to the Victorian period in this country. The recent parts of the hospital are mostly of the basic functionalist structural design, of the later decades of the 20th Century, the largest being a large glass surface cuboid. The contrast of the design of both periods found next to each other and forming the one institution, notably on the Crumlin Road, may be found at least surprising, and some say incongruous.