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Work and Suffolk Workhouses |
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House of Industry
Many towns starting with Bristol in 1696, set up a single large workhouse to accommodate the poor from all the parishes within the town boundary. Sudbury, in Suffolk, united its three parishes in 1702 and Bury St Edmunds its two in 1747.
Sudbury from the south-east, 2001
© Peter Higginbotham |
Rural parishes, in the east and southeast of Suffolk, adopted the same idea and based on the ancient Hundred areas, closed all the poor and workhouses and built a large central House of Industry. The aim was to reduce the cost to the ratepayers, by cutting down administrative charges. Between 1757 and1781, nine Houses of Industry, covering nearly 50% of parishes, had been built in Suffolk.
A survey of these Houses was made by Thomas Ruggles and published by Arthur Young in 1794. The poor were employed in all the Houses to comb and spin wool for Norwich clothiers. Four of the nine Houses also spun hemp into linen, used to make pauper’s clothing. In addition, at Oulton, near the coast at Lowestoft, they made nets for the herring fishery; at Bulcamp, shoes and stockings and at Nacton, ropes, sacks and plough lines were produced.
The Suffolk poet George Crabbe, of Aldeburgh in 1810 described a local House of Industry:
Your plan I love not. With a number you
Have placed your poor, your pitiable few;
There, in one house throughout their lives to be,
The pauper-palace which they hate to see:
That giant-building, that high bounding wall,
Those bare-worn walks, that lofty thundering hall!
That large clock, which tolls each dreaded hour,
Those gates and locks and all those signs of power:
It is a prison, with a milder name,
Which few inhabit without dread or shame…
Words: Clive Paine
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