Description

LOUTH

824/0/10020 NORTHGATE
20-FEB-06 (South side)
Dales Warehouse including flats in sou
thern part of building

II

Also Known As: The former House of Industry
Former House of Industry (workhouse), then butcher's premises, northern part at present vacant, southern part now flats. 1791, with mid C19 and late C20 alterations. Red brick with cogged brick eaves and pantile roof with truncated end stack. Plan of main range to street with central carriageway and rear wings on ends. 3 storeys and part basement. Windows have narrow segmental brick arches to left and similar but taller arches to right where also heavy sills, probably as part of a mid C19 refurbishment. 5-window range at first floor with wide taking-in door to centre left. 6/6 sashes to left and 6/6 sash-type top-hung windows to right. The taking-in door is divided with a plank door to left and a louvred opening to right. On second floor is a sash to left then another taking-in door, two blind windows to centre and two sash-type windows to right. The ground floor has three sashes and sash-type windows to either side of the carriage entrance arch. This arch has stone impost blocks and guard blocks and a pair of iron railing gates. Within the passage on the left is the door to the basement. The left end of the main range is blank but there are boarded windows on the first and second floors of the rear wing. The right end has a massive brick buttress to the ground floor with a sash window to each floor above. To the right is the front of the rear wing extension which has similar sash-type windows. The rest of this mid C19 wing extends to rear and it is not of special architectural or historic interest. The yard front of the main block has three sashes on the top floor with a boarded window over the rear wing. There are sashes and a wide taking-in door to the first floor and a canted bay, door up steps and sash to the ground floor, which is set above the basement. The mid C19 rear wing on the left has various windows and doors including two sliding-sash casements to the first floor. A further single-storey outbuilding range extends across the back.
INTERIOR. The lower floors of the left part have a little-altered late C18/C19 character and in the top floor there are massive beams for a hoist. Tie beams survive on the top floor and some timber-framed partitions. There are also plank doors. The roof remains in part but some elements were renewed when it was felted.

The old Poor Law, requiring individual parishes throughout England to relieve their own poor and set able-bodies paupers to work, evolved through a series of late-Tudor statutes and culminated in the definitive Act of Elizabeth in 1601. Parishes financed their repsonsibiltiy by levying a tax, the poor rate, on householders. By 1640 many urban parishes were using the poor rate to shelter children and the aged in 'hospitals' and to employ those capable in 'working houses'. In the C18 attitudes towards the poor hardened, with the idea that poverty was due to idleness and indulgence gaining ground. Knatchbull's Act of 1723 empowered parishes to offer able bodied applicants a place in a workhouse as a condition of receiving relief. By the middle of the century, parish based administration was being severely criticised, the workhouses were viewed as economic failures and open to corrupt practices, and demand grew for reform. Most old poor law buildings which survive date from the C18, there was no standard form and size and appearance varied, ranging from converted cottages to imposing edifices.

In 1834 the Poor Law Amendment Act inaugurated the era of the New Poor Law with administration based on groupings of parishes into New Poor Law unions overseen by three Poor Law Commissioners. Many Unions found it more cost effective to build new 'central', mixed, workhouses than to maintain the ones they had inherited. In addition to accommodating seven classes of pauper the new workhouses also accommodated staff, offices, a boardroom and waiting room. Four model designs were published in 1835 and again in 1836. The 'square' and 'hexagon' plans proved most popular, the 'hexagon' being most suited to the necessary segregation. By 1841 a network of workhouses answering the requirements of the New Poor Law extended over England and, of those, 320 had been erected as a result of the 1834 Act.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE.
This is a comparatively little-altered pre Poor Law purpose-built workhouse and is a rare survival on the scale of a small institution in a market town. The part to right was upgraded in the mid C19 but retained the window disposition. There have been alterations behind on this side to form flats, and the mid C19 wing to rear, also flats, is not of special architectural or historic interest. However the main structure remains intact and the interior of the left part survives perhaps remodelled to a small extent when it became a butcher's premises and residence. In addition to its individual rarity this workhouse's significance is augmented by the survival, as well, of the post Poor Law workhouse, of 1837-9 (q.v.). Recent English Heritage research has shown that the survival of an Old Poor Law workhouse in a market town on this scale is rare and of both in the same town very unusual.

Sources.
Sir Frederick Morton Eden, The State of the Poor: A History of the Labouring Classes in England, with Parochical Reports, 1797.
Bill Painter, Upon the Parish Rate, The Story of Louth Workhouse..., 2000. pp14-16.
Kathryn Morrison, The Workhouse, English Heritage, 1999, pp 28-31.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26670849

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

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  Warwickshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Northumberland (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Liverpool: Pevsner City Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
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  Somerset: South and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)