Echoes of the Workhouse

This building, now an evangelical chapel of the Christian cult, is the last vestige of the old Wallingford Work House. When the developers moved in to demolish the place they were required to preserve this part, the dining hall, but decided it was too dilapidated and so they pulled it down and then rebuilt it. The original cellar still survives beneath it but thankfully not the infamous "pit" that once yawned nearby and into which men and boys would be compelled to descend and hack out stone all day. Women and girls were mainly required to work at the difficult and painful process of oakum picking. Wallingford workhouse served a large area of Oxfordshire and what was Berkshire at that time including Didcot, the Hagbournes, the Astons, Nuneham, Benson, etc. all their "paupers" had to make their way here and plead for poor relief from the "respectable" citizens placed in authority over them. Relief was not guaranteed and often they would have to walk the ten miles or so back again whence they had come, empty handed and empty bellied. In the early nineteenth century the combined economic disasters (for the workforce not the landowners or industrialists) of the end of the Napoleonic wars , resulting in masses of ex soldiers returning, and the mass unemployment and lowering of wages resulting from agricultural reforms meant there were suddenly a lot more poor people about. The "New Poor Law"Act of 1834 sought to address this by blaming the poor for their poverty, claiming it was because they were lazy or that it was a just punishment from God for their sins - they therefore created the work house system, deliberately designed to be harsher than even the worst paid employment. On entering the grim institute they would be forced to sell or give up everything they possessed, even their clothes, they were given prison style uniforms, families were split up, sexes segregated, their right even to go outside the precincts of the place curtailed, religion of course was compulsory. The result was of course a misery and humiliation that traumatised the working classes so badly it's shadow extends to the present day. Many preferred homelessness or suicide to entering here. In theory this shameful period of our social history ended in 1930 but in fact many of these places carried on in much the same way under different names until 1948 and the creation of modern Britain by Clement Attlee's socialist government. Like so many other things that came out of the nation's determination to improve things after the Second World War we are now living in an age where these advances are being rolled back, the mounting injustice of the coalition's welfare "reforms" are straight out of the play book of 1834, people aren't poor because of the dismantling of British industry under Thatcher and her successors, nor because of the double dip recession since 2008, a recession deepened and prolonged by tax cuts for the wealthy and austerity for everyone else, not because of zero hour contracts and inadequate wages, not even because of illness and disability, no people are poor because they are idle shirkers and they must be treated accordingly.


Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that.
Our toils obscure an' a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The Man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hodden grey, an' a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man's a Man for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, an' a' that;
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.

Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that:
The man o' independent mind
He looks an' laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that;
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.