Southwell Workhouse

A while ago we visited Southwell Workhouse in Nottinghamshire. Built in 1824 to house the local destitute it's now maintained by the National Trust.

Each parish had to pay to support their poor so in the early 1800s the local parishes got together and built the Workhouse to house everyone.

The ethos of the Workhouse was everyone worked together; gardening, cooking, cleaning, teaching te young. Men and women had seperate areas, even outside.

I expected big large dormatories but instead there were lots of smaller bedrooms, each with many many beds. Some of the larger beds had people sleeping head to toe, especially children.

There was quite a large school room, education was important as it was hoped the children would get a better life.

For such a large building the kitchen was quite small, it would have been a very hot busy place to work.

As would the laundry, certainly a more manual job than our modern push a button washing machines.

As late as the 1970s the Workhouse was used as social housing with the rooms being set up as bedsit. Some housed large families and are set up to show how cramped the conditions were.

It was an interesting place to visit, not what I expected and although life would have been very hard it did give some hope to those in hard times.