Local History

Drive through any town or village in Essex and there's a good chance you will pass a former workhouse. Your ancestors may have worked there. You or a member of your family could have been born within their walls. You could even live in one that has been converted.

Whatever the case, the impact these buildings have had on our lives and the lives of our forefathers cannot be underestimated.

Witham's former workhouse is now retirement flats

Help for the poor

The idea of a poor house - somewhere under-priviledged families could go to work in return for food and shelter - dates back to the 14th century when churches would look after those in most need.

However, in 1723, the government of the time decided the responsibility should be placed on the local parishes.

"Essex has about 400 parishes and about 160-170 of those had a parish workhouse at one time or another," explains local historian John Drury.

"So just under half of the parishes had a workhouse."

The families who were in need would help the workhouse master, with wives in the kitchens and husbands on the land or being lent out to a local farmer, etc. This would all be paid for by the local residents by a local 'poor rate'.

Union Workhouses

As poverty increased, it became more and more difficult for the parishes to cope, so in 1834 the government took responsibility out of their hands and introduced Union Workhouses.

Covering a wider area than just one parish, the buildings were designed, as John describes it, to be 'as close to a prison as it could be, without it actually being a prison.'

The Porters lodge would accept new admissions

As a result, the layout and design of the workhouses built during this time were fairly similar, whatever town they were built.

"Whereas a family in a parish workhouse would have been a group of three or four, when they were moved into a union workhouse the sexes were separated," explains John.

"To achieve that the government said to build a workhouse as a three-storey building in the form of a cross, with single-storey buildings on the outside.

"By doing so, this created four squares for exercise yards - one for the boys, one for the girls, one for the men and one for the women.

'Inmates' were monitored from the central tower

"So whereas the boys and girls may have seen each other in the school room during the day, they would not have seen their parents probably until the weekend, if they were allowed out via the Porter's Lodge to go for a walk or to go to church."

For nearly a century, these monoliths - with their dark red-bricks, white-window frames and imposing tower - became one of the most striking and most recognisable buildings in many of our towns.

"The two architecturally interesting ones are the one at Dunmow that was built along the mock-Gothic style," says John.

"The other one is at Saffron Walden which, although was built in the standard cruciform style, with the single-storey building around the outside, is built of yellow bricks, because in that part of the county.

Braintree's workhouse became St Michael's hospital

"You're coming into the chalk area so the bricks came out yellow so they are two that stand out of the remaining ones."

A change of purpose

The advent of social security in the early-twentieth century eventually spelt the end for Union Workhouses in their original form.

The Children's Act, Old Age Pension and introduction of Labour Exchanges meant their relevance had subsided: "By the time the First World War had finished, the only people left were the sick and the infirm," explains John.

However, this didn't spell the end of the line for the buildings, which found a new lease of life and continued to play an important part in the welfare of the community.

St. Michael's has a new lease of life as flats

On 1, April 1930, all 17 Union Workhouses in Essex were passed over to Essex County Council's health department to be run as hospitals.

Many would go on to adopt names such as St John's in Chelmsford, St Peter's in Maldon and St Michael's in Braintree, whilst others have since been renovated to provide sheltered accommodation.

Life in the workhouses were harsh, cruel and sometimes brutal. But there's no denying these buildings have and will continue to make an sizeable impression on Essex social history.