The
workhouse in Berkshire
Peter Higginbotham
Although the workhouse is often associated
with the national system of Poor Law Unions set
up under the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, its
history goes back long before that. Berkshire
often featured in that history, and the county's
workhouses provide good examples of how the
institution developed.
In 1624, John Kendrick, a woollen draper,
bequeathed the sum of £7,500 for providing work
for the unemployed textile workers in Reading.
Part of the money was to be spent on a house 'fit
and commodious for setting of the poor to work
therein, with a fair garden adjoining'. In 1625,
the town corporation bought a house on a two-acre
site in Minster Street for £2,000 and by 1628
had turned it into a house for poor clothiers.
This impressive building (for which a local brick-maker
supplied 200,000 bricks and 20,000 tiles became
known as 'The Oracle' - the name possibly
deriving from 'orchal', a violet dye obtained
from lichen. It consisted of rows of workshops
around a central courtyard, with an ornate Dutch-gabled
stone gateway, whose carved wooden gates ended up
in Reading Museum. Kendrick made a similar
bequest Of £4,000 to Newbury.
Another early workhouse in the county was
erected in Abingdon and dates back to 1631 when
the town's Mayor reported that 'wee haue erected
wthn our borough a workehouse to sett poore
people to worke' (Leonard, l900).
A significant impetus to the setting up of
workhouses came in 1723 with Sir Edward
Knatchbull's Act 'For Amending the Laws relating
to the Settlement, Employment and Relief of the
Poor' which enabled workhouses to be set up by
parishes either singly, or in combination with
neighbouring parishes. The Act was also the
origin of the 'workhouse test' - that the
prospect of the workhouse should act as a
deterrent and that relief would only be available
to those who were desperate enough to accept its
regime. In June 1724, Abingdon took advantage of
the new Act when St Helen's Parish Vestry was
authorised to spend up to £150 on a house 'for
the lodging, keeping, maintaining and employing
such poor as do or shall desire relief (Cox, 1999).
The first governor appointed in 1725 at a salary
of £30 per annum was the then parish clerk,
Edward Hacker. He and his wife also received
remuneration in the form of 'meat, drink and
washing'. Their duties included the religious
instruction of children.
In 1797, in his national survey 'The State of
the Poor', Eden reported on the state of several
Berkshire workhouses. By this time, the 'farming'
of the poor was often handed over to a contractor
for a fixed annual payment. In the St Mary's
parish of Reading, workhouse conditions seemed
reasonably tolerable:
The Poor are chiefly maintained in a
workhouse, erected about 20 years ago, for £1,400,
of which £650 has been paid off. It seems a
comfortable and convenient lodging for the Poor,
but not always sufficiently aired. The lodging
rooms contain 2, 3, 4 beds apiece, made of flocks
and feathers. In winter generally about 80 or 90
persons in the house. They are chiefly employed
in spinning hemp, but 2 looms for weaving sail
cloth were lately erected. Some of the Poor are
sent out to work for the farmers. About £350 a
yeas. are paid to out-pensioners, 1s. or 1s. 6d.
the usual allowance to each. If they require more
they are usually taken into the house. Diet in
Workhouse: Breakfast-Sunday-Bread, cheese and
beer; Monday and Friday-Bread and broth; Tuesday,
Wednesday and Saturday-Milk pottage; Thursday-
bread and cheese. Dinner-Sunday, Thursday-Meat,
pudding, vegetables and bread; Monday, Saturday
Bread and cheese; Tuesday-Bread and broth;
Wednesday, Friday-Cold meat. Supper every day
Bread, cheese and beer. Old people are allowed
tea, bread and butter for breakfast.
Likewise in New Windsor:
The Poor are either relieved at home, or in
a Poor-house, which is a very convenient
building, and seems to be kept tolerably clean.
Feather beds are used. There are 6 or 7 in each
room; 2 sleep in a bed. 96 paupers, chiefly old
people and children, are at present in the house.
The latter are instructed in reading till they
are 7 years old, and are then put to a free
school, where they are clothed and educated till
they are 14, when the boys are bound apprentices
till they are 21, with an apprentice fee of £10,
arising from the interest of donations bequeathed
for that purpose. In the Poor-house linen and
stockings are manufactured for the use of the
house. For all other work, which consists in
picking hair, wool, etc., for other manufactures,
the Poor are allowed 2d. in every shilling they
earn for the house.
... Table of diet in the Poor-house:
Breakfast, every day - bread and broth;
Dinner - Sunday - Mutton and vegetables; Monday,
Wednesday, Friday - cold meat; Tuesday, Thursday
- Beef and vegetables; Saturday Bread and
cheese. Supper, every day - Bread and cheese for
adults; bread and butter for children. At dinner
and supper a pint of small beer is allowed to a
grown person, and a less quantity to children.
Women who can procure themselves tea and sugar
have bread and butter. at breakfast, instead of
broth.
In St Mary's parish, Wallingford, an even more
relaxed regime existed:
The contractor who farms the Poor receives
£300 a year, for which he undertakes to supply
all the Poor belonging to the parish with
victuals, and clothes. The parish pays doctors,
and attorney's bills, etc. The Poor are not
employed in any manufacture; but such as can do a
little work, are allowed to go out of the Poor-house,
wherein they are maintained by the contractor.
The introduction of a woollen or linen
manufacture would perhaps be serviceable to this
part of the country.
After 1782, with the passing of Thomas
Gilbert's Act 'For the Better Relief and
Employment of the Poor', groups of parishes could
unite to share the financial burden of operating
a workhouse although this was to be for the
benefit only of the old, the sick and the infirm.
Able-bodied paupers were to be found employment
near their own homes, with land-owners, farmers
and other employers receiving allowances to bring
wages up to subsistence levels. A Gilbert's Union
was formed in Faringdon in 180l, with the
Wallingford parishes of St Mary, St Leonard, and
St Peter following suit in 1807.
The Wallingford Gilbert's Union built a
workhouse for 282 inmates half a mile west of the
town centre. On 23rd May, 1808, the workhouse
Guardians appointed Mr James Dehay of South
Moreton as surgeon, apothecary and man-midwife
for the Poor of
| 1. Dead House |
15. Work Room |
29. Slaughter
House |
| 2. Refractory
Ward |
16. Coals |
30. Work Room |
| 3. Work Room |
17. Bakehouse |
31. Washing
Room |
| 4. Dust |
18. Bread Room |
32. Bath |
| 5. Work Room |
19. Delivery
Room |
33. Receiving
Ward, 6 beds |
| 6. Washing
Room |
20. Porter's
Room |
34. Wash House |
| 7. Receiving
Ward, 6 beds |
21. Searching
Room |
35. Laundry |
| 8. Bath |
22. Store |
36. Dust |
| 9. Work Room |
23. Potatoes |
37. Washing
Room |
| 10. Dust |
24. Coals |
38. Work Room |
| 11. Washing
Room |
25. Receiving
Ward, 4 beds |
39. Refractory
Ward |
| 12. Flour and
Mill Room |
26. Washing
Room |
40. Dead House |
| 13. Washing
Room |
27. Work Room |
41. Well |
| 14. Receiving
Ward, 3 beds |
28. Piggery |
42. Passage |
Model plan of
Abingdon and Bradfield workhouses
the union (outside the workhouse as well as
inside) at a salary of 30 guineas, which also
covered drugs, medical applications and
attendances, except for those involving venereal
disease (Hardman, 1994).
In 1828, Wallingford extended its poor relief
and agreed to employ all able-bodied men applying
for work in digging for stone. An area called the
'Pit' in the workhouse garden was opened for this
purpose, with labourers paid a daily rate of 9d
for married men, 6d for single men over fourteen,
and 3d for boys; a foreman received ls.3d.
Parishes often went to great length in keeping
the unemployed occupied, using the 'roundsman'
system: able-bodied paupers were sent around the
local rate-payers who tried to give them work to
do, even if this meant digging holes and
immediately filling them in again, or delivering
'letters' which contained only blank sheets of
paper.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the cost
of 'out-relief' in the form of job creation, and
handouts of food or money, was rising steadily. A
contributory factor in this was the infamous
'Berkshire Bread Act' which arose from a meeting
on 6th May 1795, when the Justices of the County'
and other discreet persons 'met' at the Pelican
Inn, Speenhamland' (at Speen, near Newbury). They
fixed the level of agricultural wages on a scale
relating to the price of bread and on the size of
a labourer's family. Over the next decades,
though never formally implemented in law, the
basic principles of the Speenhamland system
became widely adopted. However, in 1830, rising
unemployment, low wages, and the threat of
agricultural mechanisation led to the 'Captain
Swing' riots. On 17th November, a large group of
labourers from Thatcham destroyed threshing
machines at a number of farms in pursuit of their
demands for higher wages. In the following days,
numerous attacks and riots followed in the west
of the county. (The labourers of Speen joined the
protest briefly, but their demands were satisfied
by a rapidly offered increase in wages.)
In 1832, in the face of such unrest, and
growing discontent with the Speenhamland system,
which many viewed as having removed the
distinction between worker and pauper, the
government appointed a Royal Commission to
formulate a new national policy for the
administration of poor relief. In 1834, the
resulting Act 'for the Amendment and better
Administration of the Laws relating to the Poor
in England and Wales', proposed the total
abolition of out-relief. Henceforth, poor relief
would be organized and funded on the basis of new
administrative areas called Poor Law Unions (PLUs).
Each PLU would operate a workhouse whose guiding
principle would be the 'workhouse test' - that
relief would be only be available to those
willing to submit to its grim regime.
Berkshire Poor Law Unions post
1834
Officers of the new Poor Law Commission (PLC)
began touring the country to implement the new
Act. Their reports on what they found showed
considerable variations in how parishes were
operating poor relief. Assistant Commissioner
Richard Hall was clearly not impressed by the
state of affairs in Wallingford:
I found that the guardians were annually
appointed, and did nothing; intact, they were
ignorant that they had any official duty to
perform beyond keeping the workhouse in repair;
the overseers paid the poor, and all the abuses
consequent upon that method of giving relief,
flourished in the union just as out of it. The
workhouse was divided into apartments, each
furnished and tenanted by a family, by whom it
was evidently regarded as their freehold; one
woman had resided there for eleven years, and
brought tip a family of nine children; a
shoemaker who had been an inmate seven years,
told me that he earned his own living, and
indignantly asserted, that he was entirely
independent of the parish; in some rooms were
young people just beginning life, having been
lately married; in others three or four unmarried
mothers, or those who were on the point of
becoming so; in some were the sick, or
those whose age and infirmities showed that they
were on the verge of dissolution; 47 children
were variously deposited throughout the building;
one room only was vacant; on my asking the cause
of this, I was informed that it was reserved for
some preachers of the Methodist persuasion, who
attended twice a week to hold a preaching, and a
prayer meeting; those of the inmates who desired
it were made members of the congregation, upon
the weekly payment of one penny.
Faringdon, on the other hand, received a
glowing report from Assistant Commissioner Edward
Gulson:
I found there a large workhouse, already
erected, capable of holding three hundred
persons; it belonged exclusively to Faringdon,
and was used by that parish alone. At the time of
my visiting the place, it contained sixty-three
inmates. Order and regularity were kept up to a
high degree in this workhouse; the classification
of the inmates, and the separation of the sexes,
have been rigidly enforced; and the able-bodied
paupers were employed in digging stone out of a
pit, which was situated on a piece of land
attached to the workhouse.
All out-door relief to able-bodied
labourers is discontinued. The workhouse now
contains seventy-four inmates from the whole
union, being only eleven more than from the
parish of Faringdon alone, under the old system.
Of the first eighty-seven labourers with
families, to whom out-door relief was refused in
the months of February and March, and most of
whom had been constant hangers on the parish
fund, and to all of whom an order for the
workhouse was given for themselves and their
families, not one-half availed themselves of the
offer, but immediately found means of providing
for themselves.
Although the boundaries of the new Unions did
not neatly coincide with the county borders,
twelve Poor Law Unions are usually placed within
the county as shown in the accompanying map.
The first Union formally to be declared, both
within the county and in the country as a whole,
was Abingdon on New Year's Day 1835. St Helen's
parish in Abingdon had been planning to build a
new workhouse for several years, and was in an
advanced state of readiness for the push it
received from the new Act. Abingdon also became
the home of the first purpose-built workhouse to
be erected under the new regime. Erected over the
summer of 1835, the new building had a total cost
of £9,000 and was intended to accommodate up to
500 inmates, the first of whom took up residence
in October.
The Abingdon Union workhouse was designed by
the PLC commissioned architect Sampson Kempthorne.
Its novel layout consisted of three wings
emanating from a central observation hub, said by
some to be based on American prison designs. The
high plain walls and rows of small windows
reinforced the severe visual effect. The wings,
and their enclosing hexagon of walls, created
segregated yards for the various classes of
inmate: old/infirm males, able-bodied males over
15 years, boys 7-15 years, old/infirm females,
able-bodied females over 15 years, boys 7-15
years, and children under 7.
The new building was of sufficient interest to
form the subject of an article in an 1836 issue
of the Mirror of Literature, Amusement and
Instruction.
In the following months, the remaining
Berkshire Unions were formed, the last being
Windsor on 7th September 1835. When it came to
workhouses, Bradfield, Newbury and Wantage all
drew on the services of Sampson Kempthorne, with
Bradfield adopting a slightly smaller version of
the hexagonal design, the others preferring his
cruciform or 'square' layout. Cookham Union (later
renamed Maidenhead) employed a different
architect but also used a variation on the
cruciform theme.
The other unions initially made use of
existing workhouse buildings, with new buildings
being erected in later years.
The 1834 Act, perhaps not surprisingly,
aroused considerable and sometimes violent
opposition. This was the case in Abingdon where,
on 21st November, within a few weeks of its
opening, the workhouse was the scene of a murder
attempt on the Master of the workhouse. The
incident received considerable newspaper coverage
in the following week's Jackson's Oxford
Journal.
The first workhouses were deliberately plain
and somewhat severe in design and construction.
This was a deliberate policy, both in adding to
the deterrent image of the establishments, and
also to keep costs down. Windsor managed to buck
the trend when building its new workhouse in 1839.
It turned to the architectural partnership of
George Gilbert Scott and William Bonython
Moffatt. The double-cruciform design they
produced, with its splendid battlements, was
perhaps more reminiscent of a stately home than a
workhouse.
ABINGDON, Nov. 26
Between the hours of seven and
eight on Saturday evening last a most
daring attempt was made to murder Mr.
ELLIS, the governor of the Union
Workhouse of this district, or some of
his family, by firing through the window
of his sitting-room a small apartment,
which contained at the time no fewer than
five persons. Miss ELLIS, the sister of
the Governor, was standing at the window
immediately previous to the report and
she had just taken a seat in a position
in which the bullet passed within a few
inches of her head. In the former
position it could not have missed her
person. The. ball then passed through
a wainscot partition, just over the head
of an aged pauper, who was standing
within the door of the apartment; and it
afterwards entered, for the space of an
inch into a wall at the end
of the passage leading from the room,
whence it rebounded and fell on the
floor. It appears from the direction of
the two former perforations of the ball
that the shot was fired
from the workhouse garden and that the
distance fired was about 48 yards from
the window. The Mayor, W. D. Belcher, Esq.
and other Magistrates were soon on the
spot and whilst examining a second gun
was fired. Four or five constables
perambulated the premises during that and
the following two nights. Two hundred
pounds reward have been offered to any
person who may give such information as
shall lead to the conviction of the
offender or offenders; and his Majesty's
pardon has also been offered to an
accomplice who may impeach the offender
who actually fired the gun; and
Mr. Ellis, from Bow-Street is also here
with the view of discovering the authors
of this villainy. If this outrage has
been committed for the purpose of
intimidating the authorities whose duty
it is to carry the Provisions of the Poor
Laws Amendment Act into operation we must
say, that the folly is as famous
as the daring is dangerous; and if a a
discovery should take place, the culprit
if convicted, will unquestionably suffer
for his temerity, the highest penalty of
law. Three men were apprehended
yesterday, on suspicion of being
implicated in this offence.
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Report of Abingdon murder attempt
Windsor workhouse, later part of the King
Edward VII Hospital, and now converted to
residential accommodation, is one of the county's
best-preserved workhouse sites. As well as the
main workhouse building, other surviving
structures include the infirmary added in 1898,
and the tramp-ward with its cells for
accommodating short-term 'casuals'. Casuals were
required to perform a certain amount of work,
usually stone-breaking. Lumps of stone had to be
broken into pieces small enough to pass through a
metal grid in the wall of the cell, with the
pieces being collected on the outside.
Stone-breaking cells at Windsor
This is a brief rundown of the fate of the
other Berkshire workhouses.
Abingdon - demolished in 1932, with the
site being used for a housing estate.
Bradfield - later became Wayland
Hospital. It was mostly demolished in the mid-l990s
and replaced by housing, although the entrance
block survives.
Cookham - Most of the former workhouse
buildings still survive in the shape of St Mark's
Hospital.
Easthampstead - this mixture of former
almshouses and purpose-built additions later
became Church Hill House Hospital. Some of the
surviving parts were recently converted for
residential use.
Faringdon - the buildings are now
completely demolished.
Hungerford - initially used the former
Lambourn parish workhouse plus premises on
Charnham Street in Hungerford. The new building
from 1847 survived until the mid-l990s and in
1992-3 was used to house Bosnian refugees. Since
demolished to make way for a housing development,
although the chapel survives.
Newbury - much altered over the years,
a few parts of the workhouse buildings survive on
the Sandleford Hospital site.
Reading - initially continued using St
Mary's and St Laurence's parish workhouses
supplemented from 1847 by a vagrants' workhouse
on the Forbury. A new workhouse was built in 1866-7
and extended in 1892 and 1911. The workhouse was
used as a military hospital during the First
World War, with inmates being transferred to
other workhouses for the duration. Some original
buildings survive at what became Battle Hospital.
The entrance to Reading War
Hospital, circa. 1915
Wallingford - based on extensions to
the existing Gilbert's union workhouse, the
workhouse was extended with the additions of a
fever block and infirmary. It later became St
Mary's Hospital, eventually closing in 1982. All
the buildings are now demolished and replaced by
a housing estate.
Wantage - later became the Downs
Hospital. The buildings were largely demolished
and the site is now used as a stud-farm.
Wokingham - initially making use of the
old parish workhouse at Wargrave, a new workhouse
was built at Wokingham in 18491850. The main
block and Guardians' board-room survive in the
guise of Wokingham Hospital.
Workhouses were not the only institutions to
be set up by Poor Law Unions. From the outset,
workhouses had to allocate space for schooling
children and provide three hours a day teaching.
In some cases, school blocks or even separate
schools were erected. In 1838, the Poor Law
Commissioners briefly flirted with a scheme
whereby Wantage Union would actually be disbanded
and its workhouse be used instead as a central
school for the surrounding Unions, but the idea
came to nothing. Instead, in 1844, an Act of
Parliament proposed the setting up of separate
'industrial' schools outside the workhouse -
these would prepare older children for work in
local agricultural or textile industries, or in
the case of girls, for work in domestic service.
Unions within a fifteen-mile radius could also
combine to form a School District to set up
larger establishments. This scheme never really
took off, and Reading and Wokingham was one of
the relatively few School Districts to actually
be formed, building a large school at Wargrave,
now demolished. Wantage later sent some of its
youths to the large industrial school at Cowley
in Oxford.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century,
many Unions including Wallingford and Wokingham
set up another form of accommodation known as
'Cottage Homes', which were intended to provide a
more amenable environment for pauper children
away from the workhouse.
The workhouse era came to an end, officially
at least, on April 1, 1930 when the Local
Government Act came into force and abolished the
then 643 Boards of Guardians in England and Wales.
One legacy of the Poor Law Unions is their
extensive collection of records. Every aspect of
a workhouse's administration was recorded, and
the files that survive provide a treasure trove
for local and family historians. Some central
records such as correspondence between Unions and
the Poor Law Commissioners, together with staff
lists, plans, and other papers are held at the
PRO in Kew. The Berkshire Record Office holds
most of the local records, of which there is a
fascinating variety. For many of the Unions,
there is a virtually complete run of minutes for
the Guardians' weekly or fortnightly meetings.
Other records include: admission and discharge
lists; registers of birth, baptism, vaccination,
and death; medical records; minutes of numerous
subcommittees; masters' journals, chaplains'
report books and inmates service books; diet
sheets and punishment books; visitors' books;
contracts for workhouse supplies and other
financial matters including garden, firewood,
oakum, and pig accounts!
For further information on the workhouses of
Berkshire, and all across the British Isles,
visit my website at: www.workhouses.org.uk.
Bibliography:
Cox, M (1999). Abingdon: An 18th Century Country
Town.
Eden, Sir F.M. (1797). The State of the Poor.
Hardman, J.S. (1994). Wallingford: A History of an
English Market Town.
Hobsbawm, ,J & Rude G, (1969). Captain Swing.
Leonard, E.M. (l900). The Earlly History, of the
English Poor Law.
Longmate, M (1974). The Workhouse.
Railton, M. (1994). Early Medical Serrvices:
Berkshire and South Oxfordshire from 1740.
Slack, P. (1995). The English Poor Law, 1531-1782.
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