JAMES GRASBY: Hello and welcome to the National Trust podcast.
I'm James Grasby and today I'm in Nottinghamshire to visit a
very grand building capable of sleeping a lot of people.
But despite the number of beds in the property, I'm visiting
today and a huge kitchen garden, this is not somewhere you'd have
wanted to visit in its heyday.
In fact, if you turned up at the Workhouse, you'd have fallen
nearly as low as you could. And in the Victorian era, that
wasn't a very nice place to be.
I'm, I'm slightly bewildered I have to say looking at this
great Georgian building, brick, three stories slate roof, very
handsome front door painted in blue, casement windows prettily
arranged. This doesn't look to me like doom and gloom.
FIONA LEWIN: Hello, James, I'm Fiona Lewin and I'm the Senior
Collections and House Officer here at the Workhouse infirmary
in Southwell, or Southwell as the locals like to call it.
JAMES GRASBY: Fiona it's a pleasure to meet you. I've come
up a leaf line lane through this what looks like an ornamental
garden and in the background, this great Georgian building.
FIONA LEWIN: It would have felt very desperate actually, if you
were stood in this spot 200 years ago, people who came here
were rock bottom destitute. You can imagine yourself walking up
this path, not quite knowing what's going to happen to you,
but knowing that your future could be quite bleak here.
JAMES GRASBY: Fiona, history is clearly woven out of documents
and places, tangible places, and this great building has now
become really a monument, a memorial, to people whose lives
could have vanished into oblivion.
FIONA LEWIN: Yes. It really does stand as a testament to the,
probably, thousands of people who would have lived in this
building and buildings like it all up and down the country. And
many more of us can trace our family history back to
institutions like this as opposed to the grand country
houses, unfortunately.
But by the end of the day, James, you'll have a much
clearer idea of the types of people who lived in the
Workhouse. To begin with your tour, we're going to discover
what it would have been like for you as a single man coming to
the Workhouse back then. So we're going to wizz you back to
1871 which is a census year. So we know there was an inmate
called William Antcliffe and you're going to be him.
JAMES GRASBY: Fiona. I'll be pleased to get out of this rain.
But did you say an inmate.
FIONA LEWIN: That's what you'd be known as when you arrived at
the Workhouse. So I'm going to take you around now to the
entrance where the paupers arrived. I'm going to go and
take you to meet the master who in 1871 was a man called George
Shaw.
JAMES GRASBY: I feel a heavy feeling coming over me.
FIONA LEWIN: That's probably fair, yes.
JAMES GRASBY: Fiona, I think I can hear him coming.
MASTER OF THE HOUSE: Porter. Porter. Where is that man? Who
are you?
JAMES GRASBY: Good morning, George, I'm William
MASTER OF THE HOUSE: George?
JAMES GRASBY: Master. I'm so sorry, master.
MASTER OF THE HOUSE: Why are you here?
JAMES GRASBY: Fiona? Help me out? Why am I here?
FIONA LEWIN: You've got no work and nowhere to go.
JAMES GRASBY: Mr Shaw. Master. I've got no work and I've got
nowhere to go.
MASTER OF THE HOUSE: And what authority have you got if any to
come here?
JAMES GRASBY: Master. I've been to see the relieving officer and
he's asked me to come here to ask for your help.
MASTER OF THE HOUSE: You people, you people. How old are you?
JAMES GRASBY: Master, I'm 51.
MASTER OF THE HOUSE: What skills if any of you got?
FIONA LEWIN: Farmhand
JAMES GRASBY: Farmhand. I'm a farmhand.
MASTER OF THE HOUSE: Why are you not working at the moment?
JAMES GRASBY: Master there's no more work on the fields for me
this year.
MASTER OF THE HOUSE: My God, you got lice in your hair.
You will have your head shaven and you will be bathed. You will
have a medical inspection to make sure that you're not
bringing any diseases into my Workhouse.
JAMES GRASBY: It is astonishing, isn't it? The sudden
institutionalisation of an individual from walking in
having no work to suddenly being treated like a criminal.
FIONA LEWIN: It's a loss of freedom and a strict regime as
soon as you enter the Workhouse.
MASTER OF THE HOUSE: It's Antcliffe isn't it?.
JAMES GRASBY: It is master. Yes, it is.
MASTER OF THE HOUSE: You are going to convert this rope into
this oakum. You do it with your fingernails and you pick each
thread and put it in the bin.
I will see you later.
JAMES GRASBY: What is in front of me is a, a natural fibre
cable. It is about 4 to 5 inches across. It's full of tar and
quite honestly with a fingernail, it is impenetrable
and with my already creaky old hands, I don't think I'm going
to get very far with this. Fiona, what am I doing? I've
been set this dreary task.
FIONA LEWIN: Workhouse inmates and even prison inmates would
have done this task and you'd be doing this potentially for hours
on end and it might ruin your hands for when you wanted to go
back into the farm work, so not a very pleasant task.
The workhouses sold the end product of the oakum back to the
shipyards for caulking the boards of the ship and that's
where the phrase'money for old rope' comes from. You don't get
to keep any money. All you receive is a roof over your head
and three meals a day.
JAMES GRASBY: And would I be doing it normally in a room full
of other people doing the same thing? Would there be some
conviviality at least that you might be talking to people?
FIONA LEWIN: That could well be the case, but you'd be looking
out for the master coming to check on you?
JAMES GRASBY: Because if I was chatting and idling I guess the
master might come over master.
MASTER OF THE HOUSE: How are you getting on Antcliffe?
JAMES GRASBY: What is the likelihood Master of having
something to eat or indeed having the temperature raised a
little bit.
MASTER OF THE HOUSE: If you're not warm enough, work harder.
JAMES GRASBY: I have to say it's good to see the back of, back of
him. What a formidable and domineering character he is.
FIONA LEWIN: If you want to come down these steps, we're going to
come out into this yard.
This is the exercise yard that we're in now. You can see in the
corner we've got the privies. But what I really wanted to show
you was this windowsill over here.
JAMES GRASBY: You brought me up to the wall of the principal
facade of the building just adjacent to this casement window
I can see some marks on the wall. What's this about?
FIONA LEWIN: So, this is one of the best records we've got left
of the individuals who were at the Workhouse. Can you see this
grid?
JAMES GRASBY: Yes, I can.
FIONA LEWIN: Yes. It's not immediately obvious what it is.
However, when we get a shadow cast off of the windowsill, it
creates a vertical line and intersects this grid here.
JAMES GRASBY: It's a sundial.
FIONA LEWIN: The inmates wouldn't know what time it was,
they would be told what to do and when. Maybe there'd be a
bell. But as part of wanting to take some agency back for
themselves, they've created their own sundials. They must
have done a lot of calculations for that.
It also had a lot of risk with it because if they've been
caught doing this, it would have been quite a severe punishment.
You can also see at the other end of this windowsill, we have
a second sun dial here as well and this one is for the
afternoon and it's a really special moment, very poignant I
think on days when it is sunny, when we can see that shadow, to
think that people were stood here like that maybe 200 years
ago, certainly over 100 years ago, trying to work out a simple
thing like what time of day it was, is something really quite
special.
JAMES GRASBY: That is extraordinary with the
inevitable rhythm of the sun through the skies the same today
as it was when those marks were made. That's very poignant.
FIONA LEWIN: It really shows the intelligence and the
resourcefulness of the inmates that were here.
JAMES GRASBY: Time goes very slow when you're having a dreary
time. Doesn't it drag? This has echoes and recalls prison life
to me.
FIONA LEWIN: You can definitely see how it felt like that to
some inmates at times.
STEVEN KING: This is about the poor breeding. It's about the
poor failing to work when they could. And suddenly there's a
narrative of the need for control and containment and
restraint and that's going to be achieved through institutions
like the Southwell Workhouse.
I'm Steve King. I'm Professor of economic and social history at
Nottingham Trent University.
Southwell Workhouse was the brainchild of the the Reverend
John Beecher. So he's Anglo Irish. He arrives in 1792 into
Southwell and he gets very early into this question of poor
relief because he's right there in the 1790's at the same time
as poor relief is spiralling out of control because of harvest
failure and Napoleonic wars.
He rapidly sees a systemic problem in the management of
poor people and that systemic problem is that the they're
always increasing the number and the bills are always increasing.
It's his idea to found the Workhouse up Upton which is now
Southwell Workhouse, in 1824.
This was all about two things. First of all saving money and
the second thing was about the moral control of poor people.
The intent of the poor law was to educate children not to
become like the parents that generated them.
The New Poor Law Workhouses often involve educational spaces
and initially education is carried out in many places by
more literate paupers than the people they're teaching. But
very soon we start to get schoolmasters and some of them
are badly qualified, some of them are well qualified. There
are plenty of scandals in involving schoolmasters.
FIONA LEWIN: So you can probably hear the school children here
today. Shall we have a wander down to the classroom and have a
look?
JAMES GRASBY: Yes please Fiona, lead the way.
FIONA LEWIN: And I was thinking you could be James Grasby for
the second part of our tour because where we going next into
the classroom and into the women's dormitory, William
Antcliffe wouldn't have been allowed.
JAMES GRASBY: Before I leave William Antcliffe behind, what's
the end of his story? Does he ever leave?
FIONA LEWIN: We think that he died in 1887, aged 69. So that
means he spent the last 20 years of his life here.
JAMES GRASBY: Sad, sad story.
Happy the child whose tender years receive instruction well,
who hates the sinner's path and fears the road that leads to
hell.
FIONA LEWIN: You can see the 19th century morals and values
there. This idea that if you can train the child well, then
they'll be self sufficient when they're older and they won't end
up back at the Workhouse as adults and falling back on the
system and costing money.
JAMES GRASBY: So, reading, writing and arithmetic.
FIONA LEWIN: Yes. And also geography for the boys as well.
Not for the girls because they're not going to require
that. But religious education for all.
JAMES GRASBY: Why would a girl not require geography?
FIONA LEWIN: I suppose in her line of work it's not necessary.
JAMES GRASBY: My goodness, it's possible that a child who was
admitted into the Workhouse was receiving an education which
perhaps they wouldn't have got normally outside the Workhouse.
FIONA LEWIN: From the very start education was being offered at a
time where it wouldn't be universally available for
another 50 years.
JAMES GRASBY: What happened to the children the end of the
school day?
FIONA LEWIN: Well, if the weather was nice, they'd likely
get to go and play outside briefly. But then it'd be
upstairs to their dormitories. Children were separated from
parents when they arrived in the Workhouse. But we know that they
would have had an opportunity to see their parents once a week on
a Sunday.
JAMES GRASBY: So fleeting, agonising glimpses and maybe
children hearing their parents and not being able to see them
and these enforced separations.
FIONA LEWIN: That was a big feature for any family coming
into the Workhouse. The dilemma is, do you struggle to survive
on the outside together or do you come into the Workhouse
knowing that you'll have shelter and food and medical care, but
you also know that you'll be segregated. It's a very
difficult choice to make.
JAMES GRASBY: We've just left the that main entrance hallway
towards the back of the building.
FIONA LEWIN: We stop and look through this window, we're
overlooking the men's work yard and straight in front of us is
one of the features of Beecher's original design, which is a
small infirmary. Inevitably, people are going to need medical
care, particularly the age and infirm and that's what the
infirmary originally was for.
And again, that is quite forward thinking because the labouring
classes at this time would have really struggled to afford their
own medical care.
STEVEN KING: John Beecher is ahead of his time. Beecher has
basically founded a regime and built a Workhouse that looks
like the majority of New Poor Law workhouses will become after
1834.
You have both building that is fit for purpose and a whole
regime which is all about dissuading people from claiming
relief, where they could stand on their own two feet.
Beecher also had a a sort of more compassionate side. A
Workhouse might also be the best place for the truly old, truly
sick.
So this sense of the 1834 poor law, both as a a relatively
flexible compassionate place, a receptacle for those who
genuinely needed it and as a form of discipline for those who
didn't.
GENERIC: You see? I named my orphans according to a little...
STEVEN KING: I think Oliver Twist and other contemporary
representations became very, very etched onto the
contemporary public imagination.
But these things are not representative in terms of
medical care, clothing, diet, education. In in terms of all of
those things there is no doubt at all in my mind, based upon my
research, that people in the Workhouse were better served in
the Workhouse than they would have been outside.
JAMES GRASBY: So Fiona, when did the Workhouse finally close?
FIONA LEWIN: Well, strictly speaking, that was when the Poor
law ended in 1929 and they became known as public
assistance institutions and were then administered by the local
authority.
This particular Workhouse was given a different name in the
early 20th century. The earliest reference we can find to it is
1904 when the guardians chose the name, Greet House, named
after the nearby River Greet.
This meant that for babies being born on site and for people
dying here, their birth and death certificates would have
that name Greet House instead of the feared Workhouse term.
JAMES GRASBY: What you're suggesting is that stigma
prevailed for a long time about having the Workhouse in your
history.
FIONA LEWIN: The deterrent system that we talked about from
the 19th century. It was done so well that that reputation
persisted into the 20th century. And even now on the edge of
living memory, there are people today who can remember the
Workhouse system and still feel that stigma today.
There's one more thing I want to show you,
I'm taking you to see one of the dormitories we heard about
earlier and it's actually one that the age and infirm women
would have used in the 1800's.
JAMES GRASBY: So we come to the end of a corridor, a little
partition through a door.
FIONA LEWIN: And you'll see, it looks a little bit different
now.
JAMES GRASBY: Now, Fiona, I was not expecting this.
It's a bedsit with a pretty straightforward gas stove over
the little sideboard with a mincing machine, a surface to
prepare food. There's a table with a teapot laid for tea and a
row of beds. One, two, three, four, five. Five iron frame
beds. It's a sort of seventies bedsit.
FIONA LEWIN: That is absolutely what it is.
JAMES GRASBY: What's it doing here Fiona?
FIONA LEWIN: Even after the Workhouse era had ended, this
building was still used to accommodate homeless families
while they were waiting for further help. One of the last
residents was here as late as 1977 which is why you see the
room as it is.
JAMES GRASBY: This is within my living memory, my experience. So
I presume that there are people still alive who lived here.
FIONA LEWIN: We're actually in touch with some people who have
lived in these rooms.
So today James, we have Mr Perkins who's come to meet you
to tell you about his story of when he used to live in one of
these rooms.
Michael. Thank you very much for coming today. Can I introduce
you to James?
JAMES GRASBY: It's a pleasure to meet you. Tell me a little bit
about the time that you arrived here and the sort of the age you
were at.
MR PERKINS: I would have been here with my mother and five or
six of my siblings when I was four years old because I believe
my mother was struggling because my father was in prison. I
remember being here in this room, there was no heating.
There was only, as I remember, two beds.
JAMES GRASBY: Do you recall how long you were here for?
MR PERKINS: Probably months. It would have been November because
there'd been a big bonfire the night before. I spent my time
collecting the spent fireworks, which I found quite amusing.
JAMES GRASBY: And it was one room living really? I mean,
everything happened in here by the look of it. You, you slept,
you cooked. And tell me you said there were two beds for how many
of you?
MR PERKINS: Six of us, six children and my mother.
JAMES GRASBY: And your bed was a pretty primitive affair?
MR PERKINS: Yes, mine was the two chairs with an overcoat over
me. It was more comfortable than sleeping on the floor. It was
just a little bit softer.
JAMES GRASBY: It was barely enough, in hindsight., do you
feel?
MR PERKINS: Yes, I do. But, I had to make do with it.
I do remember being very hungry.
On one occasion I was so hungry I ventured out of the door and
went down these stone steps, turned right at the bottom,
opening the door into the kitchen. There was nobody in
there. And of course, with me being so small, I was reaching
up on to the top of the work surfaces, exploring, trying to
find something to eat.
But unfortunately, I couldn't find anything, went out, closed
the door and climbed the stairs, back up to the room. Still very
cold and very hungry.
JAMES GRASBY: You were very little at the time and in
hindsight, how do you look back at that time you spent here?
MR PERKINS: It gave us a roof over our heads. Unfortunately,
the onward move took me into care and then on to being
fostered.
JAMES GRASBY: When you walk through the same door just a
moment ago. I see a sparkly eyed man. How are things subsequent
to your time here?
MR PERKINS: I like to think that I succeeded quite well. I went
on to be quite successful in the print trade. I've also run a pub
for seven years with my wife and retired on my 65th birthday and
I'm living quite a comfortable life now, and enjoyable.
JAMES GRASBY: Wonderful. It's been an absolute pleasure to
meet you here and thank you very much for sharing your story.
MR PERKINS: My pleasure.
JAMES GRASBY: Thank you. Thank you very much,
Fiona. That was extraordinary, extraordinary to hear that
story. It's a very powerful thing, isn't it?
FIONA LEWIN: It's always a special moment to meet anyone
with a connection here and like you say, to stand in, in the
room with a person who's actually lived here.
We do have a number of visitors who are local, who have
connections here and even staff and volunteers as well, so I've
actually discovered my own personal connection.
JAMES GRASBY: Have you?
FIONA LEWIN: Through using our birth and death register in our
collection here, combined with the 1921 census, I have found
distant cousins of mine who lived and eventually died here.
So it can be surprising just how many of us have got that
personal connection to Workhouse history.
JAMES GRASBY: I mean, what you're saying and what you've
explained to me is this great building is not just an
architectural monument to an era in our history, but it is a
nexus sort of meeting point for historians, family historians,
for real people, and even members of staff to find deep
connections, not only with a place, but to other people in
their family lines or other people who have been associated
with you in history.
That's extraordinary. What a wonderful inspiring story.
FIONA LEWIN: Well, James, thank you very much for coming along
today and it's been a pleasure to show you around the
Workhouse.
JAMES GRASBY: It's been an absolute delight. I've been
bowled over not only by the place but by the very emotional,
deep stories and deeply rooted histories here. It's an
extraordinary place. Thank you.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the National Trust
podcast. If you've enjoyed it and would like to hear about how
we make the National Trust podcast I'll be appearing at the
Chalk History Festival in June along with the producers behind
the show. We'll be back soon with another episode. But for
now from me, James Grasby. Goodbye.