The Paupers Palace

Using a contribution from the recently opened ASDA store in Swinton, a heritage trail has been set up, with small (even tiny) brass plates  set into the pavements in front of the various locations (there are eleven of them).

It's a bit of a treasure hunt !

This is my favourite, largely because I saw an aerial photo of this building last year and was astonished. Somehow I had imagined that the Civic Centre was the first building on this site. It was not - it's forebear was altogether grander. Think of a building of the scale of Manchester Town Hall, and just as gothic.

This is what the plate says: 

Swinton Industrial School
Opened 1846 Closed 1925
"The Pauper's Palace", also known locally as "The Bastille"


Where the civic centre now stands was the Swinton Moral and Industrial School set up by the Manchester Poor Law Union. "Union" was the name given to a group of parishes which had joined together to provide workhouses. The Manchester Union was one of the first to set up a large institution for pauper children.
Charles Dickens himself visited the school in 1850 and said that it could easily be mistaken for a Duke's country seat. He called it a pauper's palace.