Out & About

'Live Interpretation' at Southwell Workhouse.

The Rev. J.T. Becher designed the Workhouse at Southwell in North Nottinghamshire, and it is considered the best preserved and least altered workhouse in the country.  Whilst it offered shelter for the infirm and elderly it was to be a deterrent to the idle.  The design is based on the principle of  segregation - males from females, elderly from young, and the children separated from everyone.

 When I visited we were able to 'attend' the school - pretending for a while to be young children incarcerated in the Workhouse.  When the magnificently-dressed schoolmaster appeared and rung the big brass bell, we were lined up in the school yard, while the 'inmates' hung up the dripping washing and collected water from the pump.

Once inside the school room we sat on narrow backless benches, while the schoolmaster strode up and down. stressing that he ruled with two things, a long thin switch that he twitched ominously, and the Holy Bible.

While we chanted our tables, wrote our names on slates and struggled to remember pre-decimal coinage, the Master of the Workhouse walked ominously around, surveying  everything. It was nice to know that he had given instruction that we, the children, were to be treated kindly as he considered it was no fault of ours if our parents had died, or we'd been abandoned at the gates.  Likewise the elderly infirm.  However, for the young able-bodied who were considered idle and work-shy, the regime was harsh in the extreme, even though many of these unfortunate souls were farm labourers unable to find work during the long winter months.

Inside the house the stone floors were endlessly being scrubbed for clean-living and hard-work were the foundations of the 1834 New Poor Law.  In one room men struggled to unravel bits of rope, the fluffed out results going to stuff mattresses, not for them but for the better-off.  In the Workhouse the thin mattresses were full of straw.

The Schoolmaster asked us how many shillings were in 4 guineas - for this was an amount of money he was all too familiar with, for it represented his salary for a year.  In return he was responsible for the children 24 hours a day, every day with never as much as an hour off duty.  The mistress, the Master's wife, sometimes helped out with the girls, and the very little children, but basically they were the School Master's concern.  During the winter he could have as many as 50 pupils, but the numbers dropped during the summer when many would be picking stones and later crops out in the nearby fields.

Basically our education would enable us write a simple job-seeking letter, purchase goods as a shop and be correctly served in a pub!  We would remain at the Workhouse until employment was found for us, from about the age of 8 or 9.  For girls this would be as a servant in a wealthy house, for the boys usually labouring in the fields or going down the mines.

It was all good fun and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I was also aware that it was only make-believe, and that I could saunter down the long driveway any time I liked, unlike the real residents of the 1841 Southwell Workhouse.

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