Edited by Steven Oliver, Friday 8 May 2026 at 12:20
With A225 TMA03 now open (on women under the new Poor Law) and asking to be avoided 😃 it seemed a good day to look at Workhouses!
The original 1834 York Poor Law Union took over a pre-existing workhouse that itself had been converted from a mill in the 1760's. It now stands on a residential street beside the Museum Gardens. As in the module chapter, there were recurrent abuses and scandals (some of which are set out on Peter Higginbotham's fascinating website) leading to pressure for a new purpose-built workhouse which was completed in 1849...
A number of buildings from the later workhouse also survive, now used as student residences for one of the city's universities. The entrance building would have processed admissions and housed vagrants...
... and the block behind it held adults, children and those classed as 'lunatics' - all segregated by sex. Where I took the photo below I would have been standing in the 'Boy's Yard' and the green space would in fact have been divided and walled off. There was a third complex of buildings, now lost, that formed the hospital wing. Like so many such buildings, this site became part of the long-stay elderly care facilities for the NHS in the second half of the 20th century.
All of the buildings looked bright and cheerful in the sunlight today, but there are a few remaining stretches of the perimeter walls and these seemed to hold on to the authentic 19th century character!
York's Workhouses 'old' and 'new'
With A225 TMA03 now open (on women under the new Poor Law) and asking to be avoided 😃 it seemed a good day to look at Workhouses!
The original 1834 York Poor Law Union took over a pre-existing workhouse that itself had been converted from a mill in the 1760's. It now stands on a residential street beside the Museum Gardens. As in the module chapter, there were recurrent abuses and scandals (some of which are set out on Peter Higginbotham's fascinating website) leading to pressure for a new purpose-built workhouse which was completed in 1849...
A number of buildings from the later workhouse also survive, now used as student residences for one of the city's universities. The entrance building would have processed admissions and housed vagrants...
... and the block behind it held adults, children and those classed as 'lunatics' - all segregated by sex. Where I took the photo below I would have been standing in the 'Boy's Yard' and the green space would in fact have been divided and walled off. There was a third complex of buildings, now lost, that formed the hospital wing. Like so many such buildings, this site became part of the long-stay elderly care facilities for the NHS in the second half of the 20th century.
All of the buildings looked bright and cheerful in the sunlight today, but there are a few remaining stretches of the perimeter walls and these seemed to hold on to the authentic 19th century character!
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