A district general hospital located a quarter-mile (0.5 km) west of the centre of Elgin in Moray, Dr. Gray's Hospital occupies a prominent site on the junction between the A96 road to Forres and the B9010. It was founded with a bequest of £20,000 from Dr Alexander Gray (1751 - 1807), an Elgin-man who had made his fortune working as a surgeon for the East India Company in Bengal. The hospital was built to serve the sick and the poor of Elgin and County of Moray, and it continues to serve the same community.
The foundation stone for a 30-bed hospital was laid on 11th July 1815 and it opened to patients on 1st January 1819. This imposing Neo-Classical building was the work of James Gillespie Graham (1776 - 1855), a fashionable Edinburgh architect who was recommended by the Earl of Moray. The prominent east-facing nine-bay facade incorporates a tetrastyle portico supported on four Doric columns, with a clock and copper-clad dome above.
Following a comprehensive review of acute health care services, a major redevelopment and extension of the hospital took place between 1993 and 1997 at a cost of £22 million. Construction began in February 1993 with a foundation stone being laid by Ian Lang (b.1940), the Secretary of State for Scotland in June of that year.
Completed in May 1995, the first phase of work comprised a new ward block, built behind the original 19th-century building, the upgrade of the existing operating theatre and the creation of a new three-theatre operating suite, a delivery suite and special care baby unit, together with a new kitchen, staff restaurant, laboratory, pharmacy and staff changing facilities. The second phase was completed in early 1997 and included a new acute psychiatric ward, together with new out-patient, accident and emergency and medical imaging departments. Completed later the same year, the final phase involved the upgrading of the old building, which had been A-listed for its architectural importance in 1981.
Today, the hospital is run as part of NHS Grampian. In addition to the only accident and emergency facility in the between Inverness and Fraserburgh, it provides a range of in-patient services, including geriatric assessment, obstetrics and gynaecology, ophthalmology, orthopaedics, paediatrics, psychiatry, and general medicine and surgery, with supporting occupational therapy and physiotherapy services.
