MOVES are being made to strip Malvern's first hospital of its listed building status.

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport gave Redwood House in Hospital Bank Grade II Listed status in May last year, after taking advice from English Heritage.

The building dates from 1868 and is currently empty and in a poor condition, its most recent use being for Worcestershire County Council's youth service in the early 1990s.

The building is owned by a trust and trustees include the county council, Malvern Town Council and Malvern Hills District Council. The plan has been to sell off the site and use the money for the benefit of youth in Malvern.

A County Hall spokesman said trustees have a legal duty to obtain the best possibly price for assets and the land is worth more empty and ready to develop than with the building on it.

De-listing the building is essential to achieving that goal and the council says it plans to employ "external consultants" to represent it in its efforts.

Malvern Hills district councillor Richard Manning has been a keen supporter of moves to list the building and preserve it for the town.

He describes its architecture as "polychromatic muscular Gothic", which finds it most extreme form in St Pancras Railway Station in London.

"It would be extremely unusual for a building so recently listed to be de-listed," he said.

"Obviously the listing takes into account the quality of the building, the condition of the building is largely irrelevant to the listing. I do not see it has significantly materially changed in terms of its architectural quality since it was listed."

The hospital owes its existence to a horrific accident in Church Street in 1866 when concentrated sulphuric acid, being delivered for use in making seltzer-water, was spilt in a cart crash. Two children later died and there was nowhere to treat casualties, the injured being taken to the Unicorn pub.

As a result money was raised for Malvern Rural Hospital, which opened in 1868 and operated until 1911 when the 'new' hospital at Lansdowne Crescent replaced it.