Old laundry facelift could be complete in two years

A £15m transformation of an old laundry at a former psychiatric hospital in southern Scotland could be completed in two years.

Investors are being sought to support the creation of a visitor learning centre on the Crichton Estate in Dumfries.

The project would see the old Merrick laundry converted into a facility celebrating the pioneering mental health work carried out on the site.

It would also document the history of the Scottish Women's Institute (SWI) which is a partner with the Crichton Trust in the project.

The winning design for the centre was selected in 2023 with plans drawn up by Glasgow-based O'DonnellBrown Architects seeing off nearly 70 other entries.

The project has since been expanded to include the SWI.

The Crichton Estate dates back to the Victorian age when an "Institution for Lunatics" was founded on the site.

Health services continued to be provided until the 1980s when the NHS declared it surplus to requirements.

Many of its buildings have already been converted to educational or business purposes and now the old laundry is also in line for an overhaul.

SWI chief executive Diane Cooper said her organisation - previously known as the Scottish Women's Rural Institute (SWRI) - had a rich history it hoped could be honoured in Dumfries.

"The SWI has a huge heritage and its stories have never been told," she said.

"We have an abundance of documents from its inception in 1917 and it's really important to safeguard these, to protect them.

"But, actually, it's really good to use them to inspire the future generation.

"So, the visitor learning centre will provide us with an opportunity to have multiple collections of the past - but obviously to educate the future as well."

She said they had looked at other locations but found the plans of the Crichton Trust were a really good fit with what they were looking for.

In addition, she said she hoped it could be achieved relatively quickly.

"I think you've got to have some sort of time scale to work to," she said.

"It all depends on funding and if we can secure funding, with a drive and a focus, it can happen. I'm sticking with 2027."

Her opposite number with the Crichton Trust, Gwilym Gibbons, said he hoped they could create something pretty special with a "deep retrofit" of the building.

"It's a building that's very different to the other buildings on the estate," he said.

"Our sandstone buildings are listed buildings but it is a building that has a place in many people's hearts - people who worked in there.

"People will be able to connect with the history they might have had with the laundry in the past, but we'll create something that's really special."

He said the building could be of "international architectural merit".

Mr Gibbons said he would not commit to an opening date but added they were at a "critical moment" and he hoped that by 2027 or 2028 the building could be transformed.

Among the most interested followers of the project will be Morag Blair from Stirling.

Her great-grandmother, suffragette Catherine Blair, founded the SWRI more than a century ago.

She said she saw "synergies" between the Crichton Trust and that organisation.

"Catherine Blair started the SWI as a place for rural women to get together and get away from their 14 children and their running damp walls, and have some time together, for social connections and to do art," she said.

"That was really good for their well-being as well.

"She was really about empowering women and used art as well for that purpose as well as for their own happiness and colour in their lives."

She said there were a lot of connections with work to improve mental health that her great-granny would have been pleased to see.

Ms Blair said she thought she would be "very happy" but also "totally surprised" that the organisation she had set up was still on the go with lots of people trying to take it forward, while also celebrating its past.