Former Enniskillen Workhouse

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Two-storey former workhouse ‘front building’ of 1841 by George Wilkinson in the Tudor almshouse style he utilised for many similar structures throughout Ireland. One of the earlier smaller versions of the genre, this block originally belonged to the Enniskillen Union Workhouse, which like most others assumed the role of a District Hospital in the course of the early to mid 1900s, with the bulk of the workhouse complex now subsumed by a large expanse of twentieth century structures. The building is set at the eastern side of the hospital site, which itself is set on a rise to the north of Enniskillen town centre.

The original section of the building is capital ‘I’-shaped in plan with a central rectangular portion and two square end blocks each of which terminates to the front in a full-height gabled bay, with deeper bays / returns to rear. Originally, narrow single-storey outhouse ‘wings’, with angled corners, extended from the returns enclosing two rear yards, but only the southern wing survives in its entirety, that to the north having been partially cleared away [?c.1860s] to make way for the the building of a sympathetic two-storey addition, with the yards themselves now largely covered-in by more recent utilitarian extensions. To the north end there is a small, single-storey porch projection which is flush with the front façade, behind which is a relatively large flat-roofed late 20th century addition.

The walls of the original building and c.1860s addition are constructed from rock-faced snecked limestone with raised pointing. The openings to the front have dressed limestone surrounds with drip mouldings to some. Roofs to the same sections are relatively steeply pitched and covered with large blue-black slates, the verges have parapets and carved stone kneelers, and the eaves are overhanging with exposed rafter ends. There are several tall cut stone chimneystacks set on the ridge lines. Each has four square stacks set on a plain rectangular base which are linked with a chamfered stone cap. To the centre of the southern face of the roof of the central portion is small gabled dormer, which has a slated overhanging roof and decorative bargeboards.

The later additions (which appear to be largely mid to later 20th century) are finished in either brick or render and their roofs have shallow (almost flat) pitches mainly covered in industrial metal cladding. The rainwater goods throughout the entire building are largely uPVC, with some extruded aluminium sections.

Notwithstanding the aforementioned porch projection to the right, the (roughly east-facing) front is symmetrical. The main (middle) portion has a central doorway to the ground floor which consists of a Tudor arched-opening with dressed cut stone chamfered reveals, and a ledged and sheeted timber double leaf door which has full-height panels to front. The uppermost part of the opening is now boarded up to accommodate modern signage. The doorway is flanked by flat-headed window openings with similar reveals and stone sills, and the whole grouping is covered by a continuous drip moulding, with a similar moulded stringcourse over this which stretches across the whole frontage. Directly above the doorway, set between both mouldings, is a shield-shaped date stone inscribed ‘1841’, and above this is a metal Sun fire insurance plaque. To the upper floor of this section there are three window openings set close to the eaves, topped with gablets with carved stone kneelers similar to the larger gables. At either end of the front façade are the breakfronts, each with an upper floor window opening. The porch has a doorway to front, similar to the main doorway but with a plain ledged and sheeted single-leaf door.

The southern façade merges to the left with the high stone wall of the outhouses which formerly enclosed the yard to this end. Window openings are asymmetrically arranged and without the chamfered reveals or mouldings. The wall to left has a round-headed opening to its angled corner.

The rear (western) façade has an untidy aspect due to the various 20th century alterations and additions. To the right (south) of the central passageway which formerly divided the yards are two, two-storey additions, one flat-roofed and finished in unpainted render, the other with a mono-pitch roof and finished in red facing brick. The former yard walls have been incorporated into structures which now encompass the former yard spaces, and that to the left side has been raised significantly by means of modern cladding. The window openings to this side are flat-headed with plain cut stone sills and are generally informally arranged.

The northern façade is much obscured with a later 1900s single-storey extension and a freestanding Portacabin. The former is finished with plain and ruled and lined render and has a single-pitch roof. As before, window openings are flat-headed and are informally arranged.

The window frames throughout the building are mainly uPVC replacements although the rear dormer has retained its original timber frame, complete with central mullion and glazing bars, whilst there is a similar frame (but without the mullion) to the window to the north side of the porch.

Historical information

Historical information

Enniskillen workhouse
The date stone over the entrance suggests that work on Enniskillen Union Workhouse began in 1841. Possibly due to administrative problems, however, it was not completed until March 1844 and only finally opened on 1st December of the following year. Built at a cost of £8,750 with fittings amounting to £1,415, it followed the widely adopted Tudor style and general workhouse plan described below, with the front building (to east side), the ‘body of the house’ some distance behind to the west, the infirmary beyond this and the free standing fever and cholera hospitals (the former opened in 1849) to the south.

The workhouse was designed to cater for 1000 inmates but the effects of the Great Famine meant that by May 1847 it had to cope with 1,433. Between 1845 and 1851 10,500 entered its doors in total, over 2,000 of whom died there. In common with other workhouses, these numbers gradually declined in the latter half of the 19th century and by 1901 there were 203 inmates.

By the early 1900s, Enniskillen, like many other workhouses, assumed the functions of a district hospital, after 1948 becoming ‘Erne Hospital’. In the process, and again like many other such complexes, most of the component buildings were adapted and extended (or demolished), with much of Enniskillen’s being cleared away in the later 1950s.

The ‘front building’ is the only part of the workhouse which has survived in largely original form. It originally consisted of the main ‘I’ (or ‘H’) shaped block, but some time after 1858 -possibly the early 1860s- the extension to the northern return was added, with the shallow two-storey brick rear projection built prior to 1905; another relatively shallow section had been added to the outer side of the outhouses fringing the northern yard by this date also, but this has since been removed. The building, which now serves as offices for estate administration, appears to have retained this basic plan until the late 20th century when the yards were built over.

[The following overview of workhouses is based on Michael H. Gould’s ‘The workhouses of Ulster’ published in 1983, however additional passages have been included.]

The Irish Poor Law and workhouses
In the 18th and early 19th century, though many towns and cities possessed various forms of poor house or ‘houses of industry’ designed to cope with vagrants and the local poor, (the Belfast Charitable Institution -established in the 1752 with poor house built in 1774- being one such example), Ireland had no state-run provision for dealing with those unable to support themselves.

This all changed in 1838 when Poor Law Act introduced a county-wide scheme for poor relief. Under the Act the country was divided into 130 ‘Unions’, each generally centred on a market town. Each Union was controlled by a Board of Guardians composed of elected guardians with resident magistrates as ex-officio guardians. The Board was to be responsible for giving relief to any person needing it in a special building to be known as a workhouse. Anyone able was to pay for such relief by labour (hence the term workhouse). In practice it proved difficult to provide sufficient suitable tasks. To undertake this duty the Board was given powers to raise funds, known as poor rates, from every house (including those rented) based on a valuation, known as the Poor Law Valuation.

It took some years for the system to become fully operational and it was only starting when it was overwhelmed by the Great Famine. When it became clear that in-relief could not cope with the demand, the law was altered in 1847 to permit out-relief to certain classes. In special circumstances, for example, during the Famine, the range of classes allowed out-relief could be extended by order of the Poor Law Board.

In 1852, a system of medical relief paid from the poor rates and based on dispensary districts, each with a dispensary staffed by a doctor, was introduced.

After the Famine, the Boards of Guardians were given many responsibilities in the general field of Local Government, culminating in the Public Health (Ireland) Act 1874, which made the Boards Rural Sanitary Authorities. Thereafter, their involvement in non-Poor Law administration rapidly grew. The whole system of Local Government Administration was revised from April 1899. The Boards of Guardians were to revert to their original role. Each County was to be controlled by a new County Council, which became the rating authority. The sanitary functions passed to new Rural District Councils. Since rating was now on a County basis and since the Union boundaries had not followed the County boundaries, those Unions covering more than one County were split into two or more, usually small, Rural Districts.

The workhouse
The Poor Law Commissioners had originally hoped to use the staff of the Board of Public Works to design and build the workhouses. However this proved to be legally impossible. Accordingly, plans were received from three English architects. Those of Mr George Wilkinson of Oxford were considered most suitable and he was appointed as the Commissioners' architect from 1st February 1839. Previously he had built a number of workhouses for English Unions, including Chipping Norton, Thame and Witney. Originally he was appointed for one year (with a salary of £500), but the workload was such that he was not dismissed until 30th September 1855- and only then because of urgent demands by the Treasury that the Commissioners cut their expenditure. Wilkinson then set up a private practice in Dublin.

Wilkinson’s brief from the Poor Law Commissioners stated that: 'The style of building is intended to be of the cheapest description compatible with durability; and effect is aimed at by harmony of proportion and simplicity of arrangement, all mere decoration being studiously excluded.' Wilkinson, however, in favouring the then fashionable Tudor style (intended to evoke notions 15th and 16th century almshouses), ensured that the buildings were not as purely functional as one might have expected.

Within two months of taking up his post, Wilkinson had devised model plans upon which almost all Irish workhouse buildings would be based. The workhouse building designed by Wilkinson consisted of three main parts. In front was a separate building referred to as ‘the front building’. Some distance behind this was the main building of the workhouse, with a spine extension at the back at right angles, which contained the utility rooms. Together these formed ‘the body of the house’. The infirmary building completed the basic H plan of the main part of the workhouse, although it was not possible to pass from the body of the house to the infirmary without going outside. Around the buildings was a complex of exercise yards each surrounded by a high wall.

It is proposed to consider each part of the workhouse in detail. It has been possible to prepare detailed plans for each part of the workhouse and to determine the original function of most of the rooms: the functions of the various rooms often changed in later years.

Front Building
The entrance building was placed some 150 feet in front of the main workhouse and contained
a. the board room on the first floor,
b. the clerk's office and porter's room,
c. probationary and vagrants' wards (on first and ground floors respectively ),
d. outhouses including privies, washing rooms and refractory (punishment) cells. Sometimes there was a fumigation room for clothing, and
e. a small gatekeeper's annex.

Although not detailed in Wilkinson's reports, in several Unions the front building was split into two smaller units.

In 1899 many of the front buildings were taken over by the Rural District Councils as offices, the board room doing duty for both the Council and the Guardians. The use of one of the downstairs rooms for vagrants sometimes continued, the female side-room at Armagh still being known as the ‘tramps' ward’. In other Unions all of the wards in the front building were converted to offices and both new arrivals and vagrants had to be accommodated in the body of the house. At Belfast an extension to the front building was put up for this purpose. At several other places, especially where there were three or four storeys, the vagrants used the rooms in the roof with the dormer windows, previously occupied by the children. It appears that by 1899 the numbers had dropped sufficiently for the lower wards to accommodate the children without subjecting them to the extremes of temperature encountered in the upper wards. This was not usually possible in two-storey buildings.

The ‘Body of the House’
The main body of the house consisted of a central portion of two storeys (small size), three storeys (medium size) or four storeys (large size) and was completed by end wings three storeys high, set at right angles to the central portion to facilitate extension. Running back from the centre was a utility block of single-storey construction. Since the buildings were symmetrical about the centre line it is only necessary to describe one side, the other being identical. The left side was for females and the right for males.

Dealing first with the smallest size of building, the room beside the central entrance door was the matron's or master's sitting room which also served as an office. Their respective stores were behind. The rest of the central portion was one large room - the children's school room - with a small room and a stair well. The small room was a work-shop on the boys' side, while on the female side it was apparently intended as a nursery. The wings on the ground floor contained a day room and dormitory for the old infirm. On the first floor the matron's or master's bedroom was above the corresponding sitting room. The children's dormitory was above the school room and was open to the slates. In the wings were adult dormitories -two each side on both first and second floors. The stair wells on the first floor were used by the school master and mistress. Built without fireplaces, Wilkinson later accepted that any proposal to install fires in these officers' rooms would be accommodated.

Turning to the largest size of building, the layout is very similar. However, the central portion now has corridors. On the ground floor these were stone-built, but on the upper floors they were formed of wooden planks set horizontally and painted white. The ground floor had dayrooms, including work rooms, and a nursery, this last being the room nearest the infirm females' dayroom. Apparently Wilkinson's intention was that the infirm women would look after the babies while their mothers undertook their daily work quota. The first floor was here the children's school room and the upper floors the children's sleeping rooms. In the three-storey buildings the sleeping room was in the roof with dormer windows, and was open plan. In the four-storey buildings one floor was likewise in the roof.

The wings of the larger buildings were used in the same way as those on the smaller ones, but with additional dormitories for adult paupers. In most of the larger buildings, one of the wings' rooms was also divided, with the staircase being actually in the centre of the wing: there was, as before, a second staircase between the offices and the dayrooms. At Armagh, one of the largest workhouses built in Ulster, there is yet another staircase connecting the master's office with his bedroom and apparently for the matron's and his personal use.

In all buildings the utility block consisted of a dining hall -which was also used as a dayroom -serving area, kitchen and laundry.

The laundry had a separate drying room and a room marked on the standard plan as ‘wash room’. Apparently this was intended as a wash-house workroom. At Londonderry, and possibly elsewhere, by putting a floor in this room separate upstairs accommodation was provided for use as an ironing room. The kitchen had a separate room for vegetable preparation and a corn grinding (or mill) room - apparently referred to together by Wilkinson as the kitchen offices. The dining room was often segregated by a divider: this was a wooden or stone partition, or, in some larger buildings, a passageway. At the end of the dining room, preventing direct access to the infirmary was a room each for the nurse and doctor.

The infirmary was built against the dining room but without access from it. The food was apparently brought to the infirmary from the main kitchen and had to be carried outside. The infirmary was only intended to cater for the normal sick of the house and contained two wards, one each for males and females. Beyond these wards were cells for lunatic inmates with a keeper's room and dayroom, all with an entrance onto the yards. There was also a straw store and an open shed for the paupers to shelter under from the rain while on exercise. These usually disappeared when the infirmary was extended.

The infirmaries were soon found to be too small and nearly all have been extended, making it difficult to construct an accurate original plan.

Fever Wards
The fever wards (usually called fever hospitals) show more variability than the basic workhouses. Three standard designs were prepared by Wilkinson but only a few were built to conform exactly to any of these. The usual modification was to construct a utility extension, for kitchen and so on to the back. The original staircase was difficult and steep. Many of these wards had separate out-houses and mortuary.

It appears that the wards could be used with males to the right and females to the left as in the workhouse, or they could be segregated by floor. However, with the smaller wards segregation was clearly by floor, as there was only one large room per floor.

Another design, possibly used when space was restricted, was of H plan. The fever block at Lurgan (now demolished) had an H plan (later used for smallpox cases). The H plan here is apparently two standard wards built back to back. Belfast had a similar arrangement. Downpatrick had a further variant with the main entrance on a lower ground floor at one end, the site being steeply sloped, rather than in the centre. Gortin fever ward consisted of several small rooms and has since been used for domestic accommodation.

The 'Second Generation' workhouse
The workhouses built in the early 1850s were of a different layout, being, in many respects, an 'inside out' version of the earlier plan. It seems probable that Wilkinson decided that his earlier design provided insufficient space for children. Bawnboy workhouse has been derelict for some years. From the stencilled names still visible on many doors, assisted by a County Council plan, the following description has been prepared.

The front building has been replaced by two blocks, one on each side of the entrance. The left-hand block contained the female probationary ward, the school girls' dormitory, nursery quarters and school room, the board room, and clerk's office. The right-hand block had the male probationary ward and school boys' quarters and, apparently, a house for the master. There is, however, no room for the school master. The dormitory above the male probationary ward may have been an itinerants' ward.

The body of the house now has the dining hall located to the front. At Bawnboy the dining hall was used for many years after closure as a Roman Catholic chapel by the local community and consequently it is now difficult to be sure of the original layout. This usage may stem from the holding of religious services in the dining hall in poor law days; since there are
references to similar continued usage elsewhere, after the main building had been closed. There were some small rooms on the first floor, and on the ground floor between the entrance and the dining hall, and it is possible that these were stores and the matron's quarters. The kitchens were also to the front.

To each side of and abutting onto the back of the dining hall were the adult paupers' quarters. It is not clear why the two sides were of different layout. Part of the male side at Bawnboy was used for technical instruction after the workhouse closed, and it is again possible that this was a continuation of a tradition established under the poor law. There are no obvious quarters in this style of workhouse for the infirm adult inmates. The infirmary was now physically separated from the body of the workhouse but was of similar layout to the older design. It is probable that the outer wards, with a separate entrance at the back, were used for fever cases.

The Poor Law after 1899
The reform of Local Government in 1898 contained provision whereby the Union Infirmary could be converted to a rate-aided District Hospital which would then be available to rich and poor alike. In practice there were difficulties until the first World War, when powers were given to the Boards allowing them to send their poor to another Union. These powers were intended to provide barrack space in the vacated workhouses, but a direct result was a growth in the number of District Hospitals.

In Northern Ireland the workhouse system continued until 1948, when it was replaced by the present health and welfare provisions. Most of the smaller workhouses had been converted to District Hospitals by 1948.
In Eire, a revised system, originally proposed by a Commission which sat in 1906, was soon introduced. Only one workhouse, to be known as a County Home, was retained for the old, chronic sick and unmarried mothers. Certain of the other workhouses, or parts of them, were retained as hospitals. The remainder ceased to be used.

Primary sources
1 PRONI OS6/4/22/2 OS map, Co. Fermanagh sheet 22, 1857
2 PRONI D3559/4/2/1-4 OS town plan of Enniskillen, 1858
3 OS town plan of Enniskillen, 1905 (Reduced reproduction by Alan Godfrey, Gateshead, 1986)
4 NIEA OS sheet 211, 1956

Secondary sources
1 Gould, Michael H., ‘The workhouses of Ulster’ (Belfast, 1983)
2 O'Connor, John, ‘The Workhouses of Ireland’ (Anvil Books, 1995)

Websites
1 Irish Architectural Archive http://www.dia.ie/works/view/51783/building

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
H-. Alterations detracting from building

Criteria for listing: historic interest

V. Authorship
X. Local Interest
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance

Evaluation

As the only largely intact survivor of the former Enniskillen Union Workhouse this ‘front’ building has become an important artefact in terms of the social history of Enniskillen and its hinterland. It is also a good quality example of early Victorian Tudoresque architecture in its own right, which, although altered inappropriately in places, retains much of its original appearance and character. Designed by George Wilkinson, it is well proportioned and has good limestone detailing and is an impressive building despite the loss of the remainder of the workhouse buildings. Workhouses in N Ireland are now becoming increasingly rare with many other examples having been totally demolished or more substantially altered.