00:00Hello. Art and hospitals, not often seen together, but two of William Hogarth's most celebrated murals have gone on public display following a £9.5 million restoration project at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London.
00:17Beginning this week, visitors will be able to explore the hospital's north wing, including the Great Hall and the renowned Hogarth Stare, for two days each week.
00:30Now, before delving into the details of the restoration, here is what nurses, former patients and those who worked on the project had to say about seeing the historic space brought back to life.
00:43The benefit for us is amazing. At the moment, when we have a break on the ward, we just sit in an ugly staff room on the ward, listening to the buzzes and the noises of the ward, which isn't particularly restful.
00:59But now, within five minutes, we can leave the ward space, walk across the square and enter the Hogarth Stairs.
01:07And this place is just so beautiful and so calming. It's incredible. I mean, who can go to an art gallery, see paintings in their lunch break when they're a nurse on the ward?
01:19Nobody can, but we can, because we have this north wing available to us.
01:24I think to the hospital as a whole, it helps remind us where we came from, because we have a long history of serving quite a big area of London.
01:34So it's nice to remember how we started. It used to be a very exclusive area, an area that, you know, lots of us heard about, but we weren't always invited to.
01:46So it kind of forces you to be mindful because we're surrounded by things that are unfamiliar.
01:51So the paintings, the names on the walls, all of those things. So when you're looking at those, you're very much in the present.
02:01Whereas if you're surrounded by things that you're familiar with, you start thinking of all the things that you need to do.
02:05And so being in a completely different space to a clinical space is really helpful.
02:10Well, I think for a start, they have this absolutely sensational scheme of paintings by William Hogarth.
02:15I mean, really one of Britain's great painters and operating in a very unique for him style and scale of painting.
02:23And it really welcomes any visitor to the Great Hall or to the North Wing coming up the Hogarth Stair and presented by this truly wonderful painting.
02:33Having access to the North Wing and its beautiful architecture and the art in here just was a fantastic experience and did help me as a patient in my journey and in my healing.
02:48This is one of the most important buildings of its type and date in the country.
02:52It was built for the hospital 300 years ago.
02:56And this amazing hall we're in was their banqueting space.
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