Cork fire: A history of Our Lady’s Hospital: ‘They deserve our best. They have got our worst’

Our Lady’s Hospital on the Lee Road in Cork City was built as a mental health institution on the northern slopes overlooking the River Lee in the 1840s.

St Kevin’s, the imposing red-brick building to the east of the hospital campus, was designed by architect William Hill and built between 1895 and 1899 to help accommodate up to 1,400 mental health patients on the campus.

It had an appalling reputation, as evidenced by Seanad debates on reports by the inspector of mental hospitals.