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Description: | PRN 52697
The House of Industry, Caistor, became the Union Workhouse and then a mental institution. It was founded by benefaction of Mr William Dixon of Holton le Moor in 1800, and its burial ground was consecrated in 1815. {1}{2}
A site visit noted the original House of Industry, several 20th century sectional buildings, the chapel and burial ground.{3}
The history of Caistor workhouse is well documented. It was established as a House of Industry by William Dixon in 1800 with the aim of improving the condition of the poor. The house was occupied in 1802 and by 1814 there were 51 parishes united within the Society of Industry. It is one of the precursors of the polygonal hub so characteristic of the new Poor Law houses built in the 1830s. In 1834 the New Poor Law Act was passed and the Poor Law Commission began reorganising the parishes into Poor Law Unions. In 1836 the Caistor Poor Law Union was officially formed and embraced 76 parishes. New buildings were added to the original House of Industry, including a single-storeyed, U-shaped entrance block (possibly 1837), new school with master's house (1863), chapel (1866) and infirmary (1871). In 1937 it acquired a new function as an institution for the mentally ill. Major improvements were carried out including a new boiler house and laundry, modernisation of the kitchen and the installation of central heating. The hospital was eventually closed in July 1990 and has been empty since that time.{4}
The first workhouses known to have included a central supervisory core, or hub, were Alverstoke House of Industry in Hampshire, erected for 250 paupers in 1799-1801, and Caistor House of Industry, built in 1800-02 by William Dixon's Society of Industry. The hub of the three-storeyed Caistor House of Industry was rectangular to the front and canted to the rear, and would have been less effective for surveillance - or architectural impact - than that of Alverstoke (where there was an octagonal hub). Its ground floor appears to have housed the kitchen, while its upper floors could have provided vantage points overlooking the paupers' yards. As in contemporary prisons, the hubs of neither Alverstoke nor Caistor enabled the governor to watch the inmates in their day-rooms or dormitories.{5}
The house was demolished in 1998 during site clearance. {6}
A programme of historic building recording was undertaken on a chapel (St Lawrence's Chapel) and a house (Rowan House) associated with the former Caistor Hospital, Caistor. Both recorded buildings are located to the south-west of the main hospital complex. The chapel was built in 1865 and continued in that function throughout the life of the workhouse and hospital, with no readily apparent change to the structure of the building. It is a simple four-bay rectangular structure, built in yellow gault hand-made bricks in English garden-wall bond and has a slate roof. Rowan House is likely to date from immediately prior to its depiction on the 1887 Ordnance Survey map. It is a three-bay structure constructed of red machine made brick in stretcher bond with a slate roof. Its original purpose was as a dwelling and given its size may have been constructed for the master of the workhouse. Additions and alterations are more apparent in Rowan House and most are likely to have occurred once the workhouse became the hospital. The first floor does not retain the original layout of rooms and one room on the ground floor has been enlarged. An extension of probable 1950s date was added to the south of the house.{7}{8} | Subjects: | Building Brewing Poor Law Unions | Temporal: | 1802 - 1937 | Source: | Lincolnshire County Council | Identifier: | http://www.lincstothepast.com/Records/Re... | Go to resource |
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