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When the Liverpool Royal Infirmary closed its doors on December 27, 1978, a special period in the history of hospital care in Liverpool ended. For 89 years it had served the community and witnessed many important changes in medical and nursing techniques.

Situated at the top of Brownlow Hill, The Royal Infirmary opened in November 1889. There had been two preceding infirmaries in Liverpool. The first was built in 1748 on Shaw’s Brow, close to the site now occupied by St Georges Hall. This was replaced in 1824 by a second Infirmary, designed by John Foster and built on the higher and healthier ground of Brownlow Hill. This became the Royal Infirmary following the visit of Queen Victoria to Liverpool in 1851.

By the 1860s this second infirmary was already badly overcrowded and ill equipped to cope with the mounting pressures of population, medical services and medical education provision and in 1885 Sir Alfred Waterhouse, whose other designs included London's Natural History Museum, was commissioned to submit plans for the new Liverpool Royal Infirmary. He corresponded with Florence Nightingale and she succeeded in influencing some of his designs including the wards, their height and number of beds to ensure sufficient daylight and ventilation.

89 years later, when medical services were transferred to the new Royal Liverpool University Hospital, the building was boarded up and remained unoccupied for many years until, in 1995, the University of Liverpool took ownership of the grade 2 listed building and the gradual refurbishment commenced.

The Infirmary is now known as the Waterhouse Building with most of the original wards were converted into state of the art teaching and research laboratories. The old Orthopaedic ward is now a virtual reality radiotherapy training suite and Thornton Ward houses the Liverpool Cancer Trials Unit. The old Out Patient Department and the Chapel now form the Foresight Business Conference Centre. A part of the Brownlow Hill Group Practice occupies the front of the building. A third site, the Ropewalks Practice in L1 has also opened and once registered with Brownlow Health patients can use whichever of these locations is convenient for them.

In 2006 the buildings were used by the BBC to film Casualty 1907 - a spin off from the popular medical drama.

Dr Nick Radcliffe, a GP at the practice, said: "I love working here and the patients often comment on the building. It adds a bit of interest to my usual consultations.

"I've been working here for ten years and have always been interested in the history of the building. When we started using part of the building for administration recently, the plaques on the wall particularly caught my eye and they made me think who those people were and whether their relatives still lived in Liverpool.

"We have 32,000 patients now at the practice and specialise in student health. We were awarded National GP practice of the year in 2013 and we were very proud of that.

"It is an exciting place to work and be part of an innovative team which is trying to look at more ways to go online and improve patient access."

Work on the new £335m Royal Liverpool Hospital has been under way since Feburary 2014 with over 310 construction workers on the build.

The new hospital is expected to open in summer 2017, and NHS bosses say it will bring ‘state-of-the-art healthcare’ to the city.

View a gallery of the ongoing work on the hospital here: