England's best-preserved Victorian workhouse, kept much as the poor of the 1800s would have known it, near Southwell
Open to visitorsa National Trust place — check opening times and admission before you go
Built in 1824, this tall brick building was the model that the rest of Victorian England went on to copy. It is the best-preserved workhouse in the country, put up by the Reverend John Becher and the architect William Nicholson to a strict plan: a place where the destitute were given food and a bed in return for hard labour, run under rules meant to make it the last resort anyone would choose. Around a hundred and sixty people lived here at a time, and families were split up on arrival, with men, women and children kept apart in separate yards and wings.
The Trust runs it as a social-history museum, so you walk the bare rooms, the segregated staircases and the exercise yards much as they were, with the real stories of the people who passed through told alongside. It is an honest, sobering place rather than a pretty one, and worth a quiet word with older children beforehand about what they will see; the youngest may find it bleak.
The Workhouse is managed, with admission and set opening hours, so check the day before you set out. The town of Southwell, with its great Minster close by, makes a gentler second half to the day.
