The new Poor Law comes to Wantage
The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 grouped parishes into unions, each run by an elected board of guardians and each expected to build a workhouse. Wantage was one of the first unions in the country to be set up, in the spring of 1835. It covered 33 parishes, from Wantage, Grove and Charlton to the Hanneys, the Hendreds, the Lockinges, the Letcombes, Harwell and a string of downland parishes as far as Compton and the Ilsleys. At the 1831 census they held just under 16,000 people. Before this, each parish had looked after its own poor; Wantage had used its old house of correction in Grove Street as a parish workhouse.
The building
The new workhouse went up in 1836 on the Hungerford road, about a mile and a half south of the town. It was designed by Sampson Kempthorne, the architect whose model plans were used for many of the first union workhouses, and it followed his square layout, with ranges round yards so that men, women and children could be kept apart. It was built for 230 inmates at a cost of £3,290. Kempthorne also designed the workhouses at Abingdon, Bradfield and Newbury.
A chapel dedicated to St Michael was added to the north of the main building in 1849–50. The guardians first asked George Gilbert Scott for a design, but found it too expensive, and the chapel was built instead to a design by William Butterfield for just under £1,000. It was about 80 feet long, large enough for the whole workhouse, and was pulled down in the 1940s after it became unsafe. In 1869 a new infirmary with sick wards and a lying-in ward was built at the back, to plans by J. P. Spencer, a Wantage architect, for about £2,000.
Life and numbers
Numbers rose and fell with the state of farming. In the 1840s the house was close to full, but at other times it was unusual for it to hold more than about a hundred people. One recorded mishap: on the evening of 9 August 1843 a violent hailstorm broke around 7,000 panes of glass in the building.
From workhouse to hospital
Boards of guardians were abolished in 1930, and the workhouse became a Public Assistance Institution run by the county. It was later renamed the Downs Hospital and joined the National Health Service in 1948. After the hospital closed, the site went back to farming. Most of the buildings were demolished, but parts of the ground floor survive as single-storey stables, and the original gate piers still stand at the entrance.
Finding out more
The guardians’ minute books from 1835 to 1930 are at the Royal Berkshire Archives in Reading, which is the place to look for individual inmates and staff.