The Royal Liverpool University Hospital

Story

The School of Dentistry at the University of Liverpool is the university's dental school. The dental school is attached to an associated hospital, which contains more than 160 dental units, where students train on NHS patients under supervised practice from dentists.HistoryThe Liverpool School of Dentistry was founded in 1861, twenty years before the formation of the University of Liverpool in 1881. Originally called the Liverpool Dispensary for Diseases of the Teeth, it was operated by Captain W J Newman, who in his own private clinic devoted three mornings a week to treating patients for free. By 1863 his dental rooms at 82 Russell Street were renamed the Liverpool Dental Hospital. Gradually more dentists joined Newman, offering their service for free.The school was recognised by the Royal College of Surgeons in 1876, and in 1880, with a growing number of dentists, patients and students, the hospital moved to 50 Mount Pleasant. This was the start of full-time students being taught at the hospital, which became associated with the University in 1899.The Dental School and Hospital on Pembroke Place was opened on 19 March 1910 and was designed by architect G de C Fraser at a cost of £13,493. The hospital fully merged with the university when the Louis Cohen Chair in Dental Surgery was established in 1920. W H Gilmour, the third dean, obtained the first professorship in dentistry in the UK. Liverpool University founded a Chair in Dental Science in 1963.This school was later demolished to make way for the current dental school in 1969. Subsequently, the hospital has undergone a series of major refurbishments in order to modernise and upgrade the building. In 2003 Cynthia Pine became the first woman to lead a British dentistry school. An Operative Techniques Suite was built in 2006. In 2008 the on site lecture theatres were refurbished and new education rooms built in an extension of the East side of the hospital. The most recent additions are a new sedation suite on the west side of the building with the addition of new research laboratories to replace the Edwards building and a complete refurbishment of the interior of the hospital.