The Abingdon Union Workhouse was located on the Oxford Road, opposite Our Lady’s Convent and School, and existed for almost 100 years from 1835. It was the first workhouse to be built following the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 and it served a wide area in pre-1974 Berkshire and Oxfordshire.

Its position is shown on the map on the right. An aerial photograph showing the workhouse in 1920 can be viewed at: https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW000888 – look near the top left-hand corner at the edge of the built-up area.

St Margaret’s chapel, a prefabricated corrugated iron chapel, was added at the eastern corner workhouse site in about 1884 and shows on the photo as a white roof to the right of the workhouse building. It can also be seen in the map.

When the Poor Law Amendment Act came into force in 1834, Sampson Kempthorne (1809–1873), a young London architect, was employed by the Poor Law Commission to provide them with workhouse designs. The buildings were intended to reflect the harsh, deterrent approach of the new Poor Law towards those fallen into poverty to discourage them seeking from help from the parish, whilst inculcating a work ethic and character development for its inmates. Kempthorne provided three options: a square plan and a Y-shaped plan, both with central observation areas, and a cruciform shape without an observation tower. All styles included offices, day rooms and service areas with separate areas for different groups of inmates (men, women, boys, girls, and the sick) and separate exercise yards. The sexes were kept strictly segregated. It was not obligatory for Poor Law Unions to use these designs – some used existing buildings – and from the 1840s new workhouses were being built to designs that were architecturally rather less forbidding.

The Abingdon Union chose a modified version of the Y-shaped Kempthorne design, with a hexagonal wall enclosing outbuildings and the exercise yards, but with the main building having four storeys instead of the usual three. It was intended to house 500 people and cost a total of £9000 which was financed through a central government loan. The land around the workhouse provided a supply of spring and well water that was collected and pumped to tanks on the workhouse roof for distribution within the building. At least two wells still exist.

An engraved bird’s eye view of Abingdon Union workhouse in the Companion to the British Almanac 1836, p.235. It was published shortly after the building was completed. The image is taken from the HathiTrust Digital Library. See: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3143831&seq=34(© Courtesy of HathiTrust)

Building began in March 1835, and was completed in six months. Its primary purpose was to provide shelter and food (a very basic diet) for those unable to support themselves and to give work to the able-bodied unemployed which included growing vegetables on workhouse land and raising some pigs. However, like other workhouses, it also took on the role of providing free medical care for those in the community unable to afford the normal fees doctors would charge. Gradually, during the almost one hundred years that the Abingdon Union Workhouse was in use, the type of inmates changed from largely younger adults and families to older people and invalids. In 1911, for example, sixty-five percent of the inmates were aged sixty or over while only fifteen percent were in their twenties or thirties.

The workhouse system was abolished under the Local Government Act of 1929 though it took until the 1948 National Assistance Act to completely replace the 1834 Poor Law.

The details of the design of the Abingdon Union Workhouse and the way the building and the site were used over almost a century are described in detail in the two websites below, which also give a brief outline of earlier Abingdon workhouses, so further details are not included here. See:

http://www.abingdonworkhouse.org.uk/          

https://www.workhouses.org.uk/Abingdon/

The 1909 Liberal government brought in a series of welfare acts which included pensions for people over the age of seventy, national insurance against inability to work through sickness, and unemployment assistance. In 1930 many workhouses were redesignated as Public Assistance Institutions and made the responsibility of local councils, and the Board of Guardians system was brought to an end.  Abingdon Workhouse was closed in 1931 and arrangements were made for the transfer of the patients in the infirmary to Wallingford.

The North Berks Herald reported in 1932 that the workhouse buildings and land presented ‘a desolate appearance’ and said that the 12-acre site would be sold for housing and divided into 128 building plots. In 1934, it was purchased by Oxdon Lands Ltd, a company based in Coventry, which took out a mortgage to buy the site from the Berkshire County Council for £3,575. The site was claimed to be one of the healthiest and most desirable in the town, with ‘the very best position in the surrounding area, being one of the highest parts of Abingdon and … a gravel subsoil which ensures complete immunity from dampness’. The new site owners consulted the borough council for advice on naming the roads and decided on the names of two Abingdon worthies. Abbot Road was named for Sir Charles Abbot, 1st Baron Colchester, who served as Speaker of the House of Commons from 1802 to 1817. His father had been Headmaster of Roysse’s School (now Abingdon School) for a few years, and Charles Abbot had been born in the Headmaster’s House in Roysse’s Court.

Charles Abbot, 1st Lord ColchesterPortrait by John Hoppner(© National Portrait Gallery)  (oil on canvas, circa 1802 NPG 1416)
Used under a creative commons licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Frederick Thesiger, 1st Baron Chelmsford in 1859 in his robes as Lord Chancellor.
(© By kind permission of Abingdon Town Council.)
The portrait is in the Guildhall in Abingdon.

Oxdon Lands publicised the new development in a fourteen-page brochure.

The front and back covers of an Oxdon Lands brochure.
(© Courtesy of Joy Jones who provided images of her own copy)

The most and least expensive house types from an Oxdon Lands brochure. (© Courtesy of Joy Jones who provided images of her own copy)

To see the complete brochure click here.

In 1932 Hooke’s Street Directory for Abingdon lists only four houses on the section of the Oxford Road that ran along the Workhouse boundary. Abbot Road and Thesiger Road had yet to be laid out. By 1936 there were twenty along the Oxford Road plus another four in Abbot Road and three in Thesiger Road. A further sixteen were added in 1937, and nineteen in 1938.

Workhouse site in 1938Extract of the OS 6-inch map revised in 1938 and published in 1944.(© Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.)

Ten more were added in 1939. Building continued after the start of the Second World War and a further twenty houses were added in 1940 and 1941. The remaining gaps were filled after the war. All that remains of the Workhouse site today is a section of the external wall on the north side visible from the adjacent recreation ground.

Only a few current owners have the original title deeds. These include restrictive covenants, and it seems likely that all the original deeds would have included the same restrictions. There are familiar clauses like maintaining fences but also a long clause setting out all the activities the properties cannot be used for, and which makes the solid middle-class character envisaged for the future development quite clear.

Not to carry on or permit to be carried on upon the said land or in any messuage to be hereinafter erected thereon any noisy noxious or offensive business, trade, process, or manufacture whatsoever, or use or permit the said premises to be used for a Public House, Inn, Tavern, or Beershop, or otherwise for the sale of malt liquors or spiritous liquors, or to suffer to be done therein any act or thing whatsoever which may be an annoyance or disturbance to the Vendors or their successors in title or their lessees or tenants or other persons in the neighbourhood, and not to use or permit the same to be used for any other purpose than that of a private dwelling house except for the profession of a Medical Practitioner or Dentist.

Today, the estate has kept its original character despite some rebuilding.

A drone view of the development today from the north-west. The recreation ground is on the left and Our Lady and St Edmund’s church with its distinctive bellcote is in the middle distance in the centre, just across the Oxford Road.(© Courtesy of Fiona Mackay Perkins 2024)

This article has been provided by the Workhouse History Group which came together in 2021 to research the history of the development. They put on an exhibition and developed the website http://www.abingdonworkhouse.org.uk/ that was referred to earlier in this article and that gives more detail on the early years of the development as well as on the Union Workhouse itself.

The members are: Helen Brain, Carol Dunne, Jan Greenough, Hester Hand, Joy Jones, Ailsa Lawrence, Ellen Lessner, Anne Matthews, Jason Oliver, Fiona McKay Perkins, Cynthia & Ron Pratt, Eli Rawle, Barry & Lesley Taylor.

© AAAHS and contributors 2024