Golcar Workhouse, Pike Law Road, Golcar

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Details

  • location: Pike Law Road, Golcar
  • status: partially exists
  • category: terraced row of properties

The buildings marked as "Golcar Workhouse (Huddersfield Union)" on the 1854 O.S. map appear to be the same as on later maps, although they were no longer marked as being a workhouse. By 1960, the row was reduced to 3 adjoining properties which presumably comprised part of the original workhouse. An extension was added to the right-hand property after 1980.

The 1868 Poor Law Inspectors report was critical of the workhouse:

Workhouse accommodation for 22 inmates ; workhouse erected, unknown ; land, 26a. 2r. 35p. This workhouse consists of two old cottages. There are no yards or divisions of any kind further than that one cottage is occupied by men and the other by women. The building is wholly unfit for a workhouse. The men sleep together, two in the same bed. At times as many as 14 men sleep in one small room containing seven beds only. At present there are seven women and five children occupying four beds in one small room. This room is also the “lying-in-ward,’’ and confinements take place in this room, although occupied at night by the number above mentioned. Some of the inmates are allowed to wear their own clothes. The kitchen and washhouse is a small shed or “lean-to.” The “puddings” are boiled in the same copper as the foul linen is boiled and washed in. Prayers are read of a morning by the matron. Latterly prayers have not been read in an evening, as the old woman to whom the evening duty is deputed “has a bad cold.” No dietary has been prescribed for the inmates of this house. The food, which, as far as I could ascertain, was good in kind, and sufficient in quantity, is not weighed out to the inmates after it is dressed ; by long habit the matron is able to apportion the rations pretty evenly between those who consume them. It is right to add that the women and children are particularly clean ; the children seemed healthy. The house and the bedding were clean, and the inmates seemed to be contented, and perfectly satisfied with the condition in which I found them.

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