This project came of particular interest to me as my great grandfather spent a period of his youth in a workhouse similar to this during the late Victorian era, at a time when the poverty-stricken members of society had been routinely taken to workhouses from as far back as 1601 when Queen Elizabeth passed an act of relief for the lowest of the working class which made parishes legally responsible for looking after their own poor. Orphans, the elderly and the impotent poor were at the heart of the workhouse correctional ethic. However, over the next four hundred years the nature of the workhouse became a means of supporting the Parish through cheap labour rather than the Parish supporting the poor, and the workhouses remained a deterrent for the able-bodied who were required to work without pay in return for their board and lodging. Workhouses ultimately became a place where the poor were ‘farmed’ for cheap work. Stockport union workhouse was built in 1841 to accommodate around 700 workers and saw through decades of trade depression, child labour and poverty. Once the poor law system had been abolished and the modern welfare state (NHS) introduced, the workhouse became Shaw Heath hospital and then St Thomas Hospital* as it is now most recognisable in its derelict form on the southern part of the site. There is evidence found throughout the site of its many uses since closing as a warehouse. Office rooms, accommodation and classrooms as well as a chapel and a morgue to accommodate for the people who will have evidently lived, worked and died here. Famous for its iconic clock face tower, of all the buildings on the derelict Victorian estate, only the main poor law union building has been stripped and structurally renovated by the nearby college that now owns the land; in the hope to eventually turn it into student accommodation or offices. By which time the occupants will probably be oblivious to the sombre times the building used to witness over a hundred years ago.
* For photographs of the aforementioned site please see the next photo set (St Thomas Hospital) in the album gallery.
