The workhouse was bought for £250,000 in the summer of 1997.The national trust purchased the building in order to restore it as a museum. After its restoration of around 12 million pounds the museum is now open to the public. The building was restored to its original layout, however there is no furniture or fitted rooms, so unfortunately you only see how the plan was inside the workhouse.
The building was designed by william nicholson at a cost of £6.596. It was designed with wings like a prison. This was designed in order to segregate inmates into there classes.
The building is symmetrical, in the middle of the building is the room for the governer, and either side of that are the various rooms where the inmates worked, slept, and ate. From the outside it looks like a prison with a wall surrounding the workhouse. After the walls there is a small field and an orchard where some of the inmates would have worked. Able bodied inmates completed a number of menial tasks at southwell such as picking oakum and stone breaking in the yard.
One piece of evidence I found at southwell was on one of the walls in the mens yard. It looked to be a grid that was scratched onto the wall. The place in which it was done was where the overseer couldn’t have seen. If we can rely on this evidence then I suspect it was done purely because the work was dull and boring. It could possibly have been used as a calendar to remind the inmates in the yard of how long they have been in the workhouse.
One piece of evidence I found was in one of the mens dormitories. One of the jobs that they had to do was to paint walls. However this wall had clearly been painted more than 15 times. This obviously shows us that inmates had to complete boring tasks. And painting the same wall around 20 times was one of those tasks.
Another thing I noticed on my visit to southwell was that the surrounding walls of the workhouse had been re built. However the walls that had been re built were around 6 foot high. This would have been easy to get over and escape. And although it was not a prison, they seemed too small and I would have expected them to be much higher. In order to stop people escaping as well as intruders.
Inmates at southwell could be punished in a number of ways. One of these was by taking away privilages such as food. Another was putting them in the refractory cell. Luckily I managed to get a glimpse of where the cell was believed to be. This was shown by looking at the foundations on the floor which showed where the walls would have been. This showed me that the workhouse had a harsh side to it and being locked up in a small room was how it was done.
For most of the inmates the diet would have been better than usual. It usually consisted of meat, potatoes, and peas. This diet was boring but consistent, and it would hit them hard if there diet was reduced due to a punishment.
Luckily for the people who entered the southwell workhouse, it was generally a well run establishment. Unlike Huddersfield and Andover where there was a lot of trouble and inmates were badly treated.
The picture above shows southwell workhouse before it was restored.
Currently the workhouse is just a huge building filled with nothing. You can get some information from the audio tape that was provided. As well as the volunteers that gave us information on the day but as for primary evidence and a feel for what the workhouse was like was unfortunately lacking.
We can learn a lot from southwell workhouse, for example the layout, the structure and the plan. But because there is no furniture or fittings we cannot get a feel for what it was like in the 19th century.
I agree with the national trust for keeping the workhouse in its current state. However for people who want to learn for the first time, it is not very informative and could give people the wrong idea.
