Following her
very interesting article about Mary Tate of Burleigh Hall on this blog last year, and delving more deeply than
my own earlier posts on the topic [1]
in this guest blog post for lynneaboutloughborough's eleventh birthday, Dr Pamela Fisher describes the circumstances which led
to the construction of the Loughborough Union Workhouse, which was the second
workhouse in Loughborough. This building was a familiar sight to many of us,
especially if we lived, as I did, in the Oxford Street area of town, although
thankfully we are unlikely to have spent any time within its confines – but we
probably knew of people who had.
Here's what Pam has to say about the workhouse ...
Loughborough's Second Workhouse
By Pamela J. Fisher
The parish of Loughborough contained the townships of Knightthorpe and
Woodthorpe, which looked after their own poor. Within Loughborough, a workhouse
had been built on Sparrow Hill (as it then was) in 1749–52. This originally
housed paupers who were set to work spinning and knitting, but by 1834 policies
had changed and this housed only the elderly and those unable to work through
disability. This blog post is about the building of Loughborough’s second
workhouse in 1838, which replaced this earlier building.
By the early 19th century, the cost of poor relief was rising rapidly
across the country. Parishes were managing this by employing a range of
different strategies and scales of allowances. New legislation in 1834 swept
away these arrangements and replaced them by a single system that grouped
parishes together in Poor Law Unions. Each Union was managed by an elected board
of guardians, acting under instructions issued by the London-based Poor Law
Commissioners. Each would maintain a workhouse that was designed to be a
deterrent, with living conditions deliberately worse than those of the poorest
independent labourer. Once the workhouse was built, the Guardians were
instructed not to pay any poor relief to able-bodied people, other than in
cases of short-term sickness, forcing them to enter the workhouse if they had
no relatives to help. Workhouse residents had to wear a workhouse uniform and
have their head shaved to maintain hygiene. Families would be split up. Food
and accommodation were basic, and unpleasant menial work was expected from all
able-bodied residents. Anyone absconding could be prosecuted for the theft of
the workhouse clothes they were wearing.
Loughborough Poor Law Union was formed in 1837 and comprised 14
parishes and townships in north Leicestershire (Loughborough, Knightthorpe,
Woodthorpe, Belton, Burton-on-the-Wolds, Charley, Cotes, Hathern, Hoton, Long
Whatton, Prestwold, Shepshed, Thorpe Acre with Dishley and Wymeswold) and ten
in south Nottinghamshire (Costock, East Leake, Normanton-on-Soar, Rempstone,
Stanford-on-Soar, Sutton Bonnington, Thorpe-in-the-Glebe, West Leake,
Willoughby-on-the-Wolds and Wysall). Twenty-eight guardians were elected, four
for Loughborough, one for Knightthorpe, one for Woodthorpe, two for Shepshed
and one for each of the remaining 20 parishes. Loughborough’s first guardians
were William Paget, John Cartwright, Benjamin Churchill and James North.
Loughborough, Shepshed and Hoton already had parish workhouses,
Shepshed with accommodation for 80, Loughborough for 70 and Hoton for six, but
these were too small for the new Union. When the guardians met formally as a
board for the first time on 11th September 1837 they were aware that the
Commissioners required them to find a site large enough to contain a workhouse
for 350 men, women and children, which was to cost no more than £550. Fuller
directions were issued on 6 October: the plans were to be approved by the
Commissioners, the building was to cost less than £6,000 and it was to be
completed within 12 months. The parishes in the union were each to contribute a
share of the costs.
The guardians agreed to purchase a plot of land for £550 that stood at
the edge of the town, south of Derby Road and to the west of Regent Street
(then Lower Regent Street). Wood’s 1837 plan of Loughborough shows this area
shortly before the purchase and identifies the owners as John and Edward Cooper
(Map 1).
 |
| Map1: Wood's Plan of Loughborough, 1837, courtesy of Loughborough Library |
On 26th September 1837 the Board invited interested architects to
forward their plans for the building, at a scale of one-eighth of an inch to
one foot, drawings of the ‘front and side elevations – longitudinal section and
perspective view of exterior’ and the rate the architect wanted to supervise
the construction. These were to be ‘marked by a motto or cypher’ and sent with
a sealed envelope containing the name and address of the architect. The design
chosen was by George Gilbert Scott and William Bonython Moffatt.
Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811–78) was one of the leading architects
of the Gothic Revival in England. His major works include many churches, the
Midland Grand Hotel next to St Pancras station and the Albert Memorial in
Kensington Gardens, London, but he was also responsible for the design of many
workhouses. Scott trained as an architect, and in late 1834 he was contacted by
a friend, Sampson Kempthorne, who had been invited by the Poor Law
Commissioners to produce workhouse designs. Kempthorne advised Scott that the
premises next door to Kempthorne’s, on London’s Regent Street, had become
vacant, and if Scott wished to take them Kempthorne could ‘find employment for
his leisure time’ helping with the designs. Scott took the premises, but in
early 1835 he received news of the sudden death of his father. This prompted
him to decide that his ‘chances in life’ depended upon him establishing his own
architectural business.
The New Poor Law of 1834 had created over 500 Poor Law Unions in
England and Wales, and a majority of these would need to build a new workhouse.
This provided a huge opportunity for Scott to start a practice that could draw
on his experience gained with Kempthorne. His first four commissions were for
new workhouses in Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire, where he had family
contacts, and he employed William Bonython Moffatt to help with the plans.
Moffatt and Scott had both been articled to the same firm, and Moffatt already
had his own commission to design a new workhouse in Wiltshire. The two men soon
became business partners.
Scott later recounted those early days in his Recollections,
published in 1879:
‘We went every week to Peele’s coffee-house [in London] to see the
country papers, and to find advertisements of pending competitions [for
workhouse designs]. Moffatt then ran down to the place to get up information.
On his return, we set to work, with violence, to make the design, and to
prepare the competition drawings, often working all night as well as all day.
He would then start off by the mail [coach – the railway network still being in the future],
travel all night, meet the board of guardians, and perhaps win the competition,
and return during the next night to set to work on another design.’ Between
1837 and 1841, Scott and Moffatt designed and supervised the building of at
least 37 workhouses, with a further six by Scott alone, and one by Moffatt.
These stretched from Cornwall through the south-western and midland counties to
Lincolnshire and Essex. In Leicestershire Scott and Moffatt were also
responsible for the workhouse in Lutterworth. Interestingly Scott was later
employed by the parish churches of both Loughborough and Lutterworth in
connection with their restorations.
The design for Loughborough workhouse is a variation on one of Kempthorne’s
plans. Scott’s plans do not survive, but maps of the town show four ranges of
buildings forming the sides of a square (Map 2).
 |
| Map 2: From Ordnance Survey Plan of 1886, National Library of Scotland CC-BY (NLS) |
These would probably have
contained the work rooms on three sides, with the fourth side, facing Derby
Road, containing the main entrance flanked by the board room (to the south) and
a chapel (to the north). Three buildings stretched in a straight line across the
centre, the central one containing the accommodation for the master and
mistress, with the others containing the accommodation and sick wards for the
poor, men on one side and women on the other. Walls at right angles to this
range created four enclosed recreation areas for men, women, boys and girls. It
is not clear where the children would have slept.
On 27th February 1838, following the approval of the plan by the Poor
Law Commissioners, the Board of Guardians advertised for sealed tenders for the
construction. The nine tenders submitted were opened on 20 March 1838 and
ranged from £5,647 to £6,600. Inevitably the lowest was the preferred option,
but the contractors, George Myers and Richard Wilson from Hull, were not known
to the guardians, who delayed acceptance until they had made enquiries about
their suitability. They were awarded the contract on 12th April. Scott later
recalled ‘The contractor of a part of the work was a strange rough mason from
Hull, named Myers. While engaged under me at Loughborough, he competed with
success for the erection of a Roman Catholic Church at Derby, nearly the first
which Pugin built’. George Myers (1803–75) had served his apprenticeship under
the master mason at Beverley Minster, and after his commission for St Mary’s,
Derby (awarded to Myers and Wilson), went on to build most of Pugin’s churches
and four Catholic cathedrals, including Birmingham and Nottingham (mostly without
Richard Wilson, following the dissolution of their partnership in 1844).
Loughborough workhouse was the first large contract awarded to Myers and
Wilson, and apparently their first contract outside Hull.
Iron bedsteads were purchased for the workhouse (from Bristol!) in
February 1839, and the new building opened (Fig. 1). The old parish workhouse
closed, and was altered to provide a barracks for a detachment of the army. James
Massey and his wife were appointed master and mistress of the new workhouse
when it opened, but James Massey was dismissed in October 1839 on account of
his unsatisfactory ‘conduct and general efficiency’. John James, ‘an inmate of
the house’, was employed as schoolmaster from the outset and given a contract
in April 1839. Hannah Atherstone was appointed schoolmistress in May 1839, but
was served with notice in October. Another inmate was appointed as nurse on the
sick wards, under the direction of the workhouse medical officer.
 |
| Fig 1: Part of the workhouse building, courtesy of Loughborough Library |
Loughborough’s overseers of the poor had advised the Poor Law
Commissioners in 1834 that vagrancy was an issue in the town, and a ‘mendicity
ward’ was added to the workhouse in 1839 for ‘vagrants’, where temporary relief
could be given to the homeless. This was replaced by a ‘vagrants’ block’ of
separate sleeping cells in 1874, designed by George Hodson of Loughborough.
Through scandals that made national headlines, some of the workhouses
of the New Poor Law deserved the notorious reputation that they all gained by
association, yet although Victorian society viewed some paupers as
‘undeserving’, many recognised that the elderly poor and the sick might be in
the workhouse through no fault of their own. Details of the 12 ‘sick wards’ in
Loughborough Union workhouse in 1867 paint a picture of a caring institution
for these residents. It is possible some short-term changes were hastily
introduced when the guardians were told that their wards were to be inspected
as part of a parliamentary enquiry, but there is a limit to how much equipment
could be acquired and brought in at short notice. Although the focus of this blog
is on the building of the workhouse, it is therefore worth including some of
the inspection comments here:
‘In the female sick wards each patient has the following articles for
her own use exclusively; viz., a tea tray, tea cloth, towel, comb and brush,
soap, wash-hand basin, basket for clothes, cup and saucer and plate, locker
(with drawer, shelf, and open cupboard), urinal, and cape. There are arm
chairs, easy chairs, rocking chairs, flannel gowns and slippers, coloured and
other screens, tables, lockers, cupboards, water cushions, mackintosh sheeting
(but without funnels), foot and chest warmers, medicine glasses and pots, bed
rests, a library, prints, illustrated periodicals, benches with backs, some
cushions, pottery plates and mugs, cocoa fibre matting, carpets, and clocks.’
The board of guardians assembled for a photograph at an unknown date
(Fig. 2).
 |
| Fig 2: The board of guardians outside the workhouse, courtesy of Loughborough Library |
Could this be the last board marking the end of an era, or is this
slightly earlier? The board was disbanded in 1930, and the premises were
transferred to Loughborough Borough Council to become a public assistance
institution known as Hastings House. It became an NHS hospital in 1948, and was
renamed Regent Hospital c.1981. Regent Hospital closed in 1992, when
Loughborough’s new Community Hospital opened on Epinal Way. The former
workhouse buildings were then demolished, with the site redeveloped for housing
(Pleasant Close, Speeds Pingle and Armitage Close).
Pam Fisher
Leicestershire Victoria County History Trust
____________________________________
Notes
[1] Following
a visit to Southwell Workhouse, which is owned by the National Trust, I wrote a
few articles about Loughborough’s Union Workhouse, and George Hodson’s connection to it
There is a
further photograph of the workhouse from the rear on the Gilbert family
website.
Aerial views
can be seen on the Remember Loughborough Facebook group
____________________________________
Image credits
Map 1, Fig. 1 and Fig. 2:
Loughborough Library
Map 2: National Library of
Scotland CC-BY (NLS) https://maps.nls.uk/
____________________________________
Sources
Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland: G/7/8a/1–2
(guardians’ minutes, Loughborough Union); G/7/8c/1 (building committee minutes,
Loughborough Union); G/7/32/1 (building contract, Loughborough Union).
British Newspaper Archive: Leicester Chronicle, 30 Sept. 1837,
31 Aug. 1839; Leicester Journal, 9 Mar. 1838, 25 Oct. 1839.
Parliamentary Papers: Poor Law Commissioners, First Annual Report
(1835 (500) xxxv), Appendix A; Provincial Workhouses, Report of Dr Edward
Smith (1867–8 (4) lx).
G.G. Scott (ed. G. Stamp), Personal and Professional Recollections
(Stamford, 1995).
K.A. Morrison, ‘The New-Poor-Law workhouses of George Gilbert Scott
and William Bonython Moffatt’, Architectural History, 40 (1997),
184–203.
P. Spencer-Silver, ‘George Myers, 1803–75, stonemason, builder,
contractor’, Construction History, 5 (1989), 47–57.
K. Morrison, The Workhouse: A Study of Poor-Law Buildings in
England (RCHM/English Heritage, 1999).
P. Higginbotham, https://www.workhouses.org.uk/Loughborough/
____________________________________
About Dr Pamela
Fisher
Dr Pamela Fisher works with Leicestershire Victoria County History
Trust and is currently researching and writing a social and cultural history of
Loughborough since 1750. This will be followed by a history of the town’s
industries. Both will be published as part of the national Victoria County
History series of books. You can follow progress on Twitter and Facebook
(@LeicsVCHT) or make contact through their website https://leicestershirehistory.co.uk/ to
be added to their mailing list for Newsletters and updates.
____________________________________
Posted by lynneaboutloughborough
With apologies for
typos which are all mine!
_______________________________________________
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