Rhayader

Today’s the day ................ to enter the workhouse

We’re down in Wales for a few days – and staying in a building that was constructed in 1877 as the local Workhouse.

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 set up a new way of administering relief to the poor by way of Poor Law Unions governed by a Board of Commissioners. Their job was to commission the building of workhouses and to oversee their operation. This one in Rhayader cost around £4,000 to build and was intended to house 40 inmates. A vagrant's ward and labour shed were added a year later.

People ended up in the workhouse for a variety of reasons. Usually it was because they were too poor, old or ill to support themselves. This may have resulted from such things as a lack of work during periods of high unemployment, or someone having no family willing or able to provide care for them when they became elderly or sick. Unmarried, pregnant women were often disowned by their families and the workhouse was the only place they could go during and after the birth of their child. In addition, the mentally ill and mentally handicapped poor were often consigned to the workhouse.

Of course, nowadays this attractive ivy-covered building is a comfortable Country House Hotel – but incredibly it only stopped being a Workhouse in 1932. Since then it has been used by the Royal School for the Deaf, as a wartime evacuee house, a factory and a local fire-drill site. It was converted for use as a hotel in 1989 .................