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Description: | The 'Greet House' was originally built in 1824 at a cost of £6,500 and was known as the Thurgarton Hundred Incorporated Workhouse. It served 49 parishes surrounding Southwell with each represented by Guardians who held regular meetings in the committee room at the workhouse. The system implemented at the workhouse was developed by the Rev John Becher and Mr George Nicholls, an overseer of the poor in Southwell. It became a model for workhouses throughout the country following the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act which resulted in hundreds of workhouses being built. After the Act was passed the Southwell building became known as the Southwell Union Workhouse. The workhouse could accommodate 'commodiously' up to 158 paupers from the 49 parishes who paid for its construction. As Southwell Union Workhouse from 1836 onwards, it was expected to house even more. In comparison, the numbers of staff were tiny, so inmates were expected to play their part. Local unpaid ratepayers were elected to form a Board of Governors to administer the Poor Laws in the Union. The elderly inmates and some with disabilities were considered an 'infirm and guiltless' category and given an easier regime than the 'idle and profligate' paupers who were made to work. The building was specially designed to keep the different categories and the sexes separate. Men were confined to the east wing, women to the west, with children in quarters at the rear. Daily routine restricted inmates to two or three rooms and an exercise yard, provided for each class. Those who worked also used large work yards and a vegetable garden, pasture and orchard in front of the building. The work involved cleaning and maintaining the building, preparing food, washing, and other arduous tasks such as breaking stones or turning a mill. A range of buildings at the rear provided a laundry, infirmary, and cow house. Life was very regimented, controlled and monotonous. Paupers entered by the side gate, were interviewed, their clothes cleaned and put away, and they were issued with clogs or boots and a workhouse uniform. They rarely received visitors and could not leave unless they were formally discharged to find or to take up work and provide for themselves. There was a repetitive and dull diet. A strict daily menu was provided, with every portion measured or weighed. The daily main meal might be a stew or suet pudding, supplemented by gruel twice daily. Despite this strict regime, inmates should have been at least as clean, warm and well fed as they would have been in the poorest homes. Bad behaviour was punished with a spell in the refractory cell. Paupers could apply to leave if they could support themselves but those who just ran away with their workhouse uniform could end up in the House of Correction charged with stealing the clothes. For over 150 years it housed the local poor, dominating the local landscape. By 1870 the number of paupers needing special health care had increased so a new infirmary was built. By 1926 another infirmary was needed as the workhouse changed its emphasis from a solution to unemployment towards care for the ill and elderly. After 1928 Poor Law legislation, the workhouse became the Southwell County Institution but was popularly known as 'Greet House' (named after the River Greet). It no longer took children and they were moved to a new building next door - Caudwell House. It was used as a wartime emergency hospital and a home for the elderly. The workhouse regime gradually made way for individual family bedsits after the 1950s. It was still being used for temporary accommodation by the county council in the 1980s and was finally sold to a developer in 1996. By 1997 this nationally important, Grade II* listed building was under threat of being turned into residential flats. The building was the least altered workhouse structure in existence, almost unchanged since the 19th century, and it was important to preserve it as a rare historic reminder of the formerly harsh ways of dealing with poverty. Within a matter of weeks the National Trust stepped in to buy it with emergency funds, and started working to secure its long-term future as a monument to the Poor Laws and the poor. The announcement of a £2.25 million award from the Heritage Lottery Fund in July 1999 made it possible for work to start on site later that year. Building restoration began in January 2000 with the roof; The roof and windows were repaired. Hand-tooled stone flags have been re-installed in the ground floor. Many rooms have been redecorated as they would have looked in the 19th century. Brick buildings, walls and privies, demolished in the C20th, have been reinstated. The total amount required to take the project from the acquisition of the buildings through to opening to the public was £4.5m. | Format: | JPEG/IMAGE | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/ | Publisher: | North East Midland Photographic Record | Source: | Picture the Past OAI feed | Creator: | Shaw, N | Identifier: | http://www.picturethepast.org.uk/fronten... | Language: | EN-GB | Format: | JPEG/IMAGE | Go to resource |
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