Patrick Comerford
I was discussing Sir John Betjeman’s statue by Martin Jennings in St Pancras Station yesterday. It is a tribute to the poet’s success in saving both St Pancras Station and the hotel next-door from destruction and demolition in the 1960s.
Both the station and the hotel were designed by the Victorian Gothic Revival architect Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878). In Lichfield, Scott is remembered as the architect of Lichfield Cathedral from 1855 to 1878. During my visit to Lichfield last week, I was reminded that one of Scott’s earliest works and his first in Lichfield is the Samuel Johnson Community Hospital on Trent Valley Road.
Today, the hospital offers a range of inpatient and outpatient services in Lichfield. It is named after Samuel Johnson, who was born in Lichfield and compiled the first English language dictionary. The two wards are named after two other key figures in the cultural history of Lichfield: the Anna Ward after the writer Anna Seward and the Darwin Ward after Erasmus Darwin.
The hospital, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1838-1840, was known to people in Lichfield for generations as Saint Michael’s Hospital, reflecting its earlier connections with Saint Michael’s Parish and its proximity to Saint Michael’s Church. But it was built as a Victorian workhouse, and its origins go back even earlier to the parish workhouses established in the 18th century, as shown by research by Bob Houghton, Mary Hutchinson, Ingrid Croot, Anna Sadowski and others and by the Burntwood Family History Group.
Lichfield Corporation let a house on the south side of Sanford Street from 1691 to 1696 as a linen manufactory to provide employment for the city’s poor. The house was refurbished in 1724 and part of it was adapted for use as a ‘House of Correction’ or type of prison. Poor people from Saint Mary’s Parish occupied the upper part of the building until 1728, while the poor from Saint Michael’s Parish occupied the lower part of the building.
The Lichfield parishes of Saint Chad’s, Saint Michael’s and Saint Mary’s agreed to set up a joint workhouse at Greenhill in 1740, and Saint Chad’s set up its own workhouse in Stowe Street in 1781.
After the Poor Law Act was passed in 1834, a national system of Poor Law Unions was set up in 1836. The unions were groups of parishes that together provided for the poor within an area. Each union had to provide a Poor Law institution, more commonly known as a workhouse, to house people who were too poor to provide for themselves, They included infirm, old and mentally unfit people, and even pregnant women who had been abandoned by their families.
The Lichfield Poor Law Union was formed on 21 December 1836. The Board of Guardians had 40 elected members representing parishes in the area: six parishes in Lichfield – Christ Church, Saint Chad, Saint Mary, Saint Michael, the Close, and the Friary – and the neighbouring parishes of Alrewas, Alrewas Hayes, Armitage, Brereton, Burton, Colton, Elford, Farewell, Freeford, Fulfen, Hammerwich, Hamstall Ridware, Haselour, King’s Bromley, King’s Hayes Bromley, Longdon, Mavesyn Ridware, Ogley Hay, Pipe Ridware, Rugeley, Shenstone, Stonnall, Tamhorn, Wall, Weeford, Whittington and Yoxall.
Edward Grove (1769-1845) of Shenstone was the chairman, Canon William Gresley (1801-1876), a canon of Lichfield Cathedral and curate of Saint Chad’s and Saint Mary’s, was the vice chairman, John Philip Dyott of Freeford, six times Mayor of Lichfield (1814, 1824, 1835, 1848, 1849,1859) was Clerk to the Board of Governors, John Hewitt was the medical relief officer with an annual salary of £50 and two relieving officers had an annual salary of £100 each. Gresley, who was born at Stowe House, was a High Church Tractarian and historian, and the author of The Siege of Lichfield – a tale illustrative of the Great Rebellion.
The Board of Guardians agreed on 9 March 1837 to build a workhouse like those designed by the architect Sampson Kempthorne (1809-1873). A site on Trent Valley Road and Burton Road was bought from Lichfield Corporation and the Earl of Lichfield, and advertisements in local newspapers invited architects to submit plans.
George Gilbert Scott had been Kempthorne’s assistant on a number of workhouses in 1834-1835, and Scott and his partner, William Bonython Moffatt (1812-1887), were then specialising in workhouses. They were selected as the architects, and William Sissons from Hull was the builder.
Scott’s first work was a vicarage for his father in the village of Wappenham, Northamptonshire, in 1833, and he went on to design several other buildings in the village. He soon formed a partnership with Moffatt, his former assistant, and over 10 years or so Scott and Moffatt designed more than 40 workhouses.
Scott and Moffat designed the workhouse in Lichfield in the Tudor Gothic style. It is built in red brick, made from clay dug out of the foundations, with a black diaper pattern. It is symmetrical with a battlemented gatehouse and a Georgian cupola. It was to hold 200 residents or ‘inmates’, and was built at a cost £2,939.
Building work began on 24 May 1838. The foundation stone was laid by Edward Grove, chair of the Board of Guardians and able-bodied paupers were used in the construction work. The main red bricks used were made from the clay dug out from the workhouse foundations and the front and sides of the building were embellished with blue bricks.
Scott and Moffatt designed the gatehouse range, which would later become part of the hospital, in red brick with blue brick diapering, stone dressings, and tile roofs with brick stacks. The range has a symmetrical front with a central two-storey gatehouse, and flanking single-storey wings, with projecting two-storey gabled bays towards the ends. The gatehouse has a carriage entrance with a four-centred arch, diagonal buttresses, a top cornice, and an embattled parapet. Two doorways in the left part of the range have architraves and four-centred heads, and the windows have double-chamfered mullions and transoms.
The Master and Matron would live in the Master’s House, a three-storey house flanked on either side by two-storey wings, one for men and one for women. The house was built of red brick with blue brick diapering. It had a central crenelated, Tudor arched stone porch, a tiled roof, three central bays with gables and a central ogee-roofed cupola. When the Board of Guardians advertised the position of Master and Matron, who had to be a married couple, there were over 60 applications.
The workhouse was officially opened on 8 May 1840, and the first inmates or residents moved in on 24 May 1840. They came from the former Saint Mary’s parish workhouse in Sanford Street, and from the Rugeley Workhouse, built about 1780.
Men were placed in the male wing, women in the female wing, and children were separated from their parents. The accommodation and food was basic, inmates were provided with a change of clothes only once a week, and sanitary arrangements were very basic.
The inmates rose at 5.45 am and their workday began at 7 am. They had an hour’s break from 12 noon to 1 pm, and then worked through until 6 pm. It was a harsh regime, with many of the men breaking large rocks and the women often scrubbing floors and washing. There were five wells on the site, and animals kept on the site and vegetable growing made the workhouse self-sufficient to some degree.
Casual wards were added to the workhouse in 1874, an infirmary was added in 1892, a refectory and kitchens in 1893, infirm wards in 1901, and a nursery in 1908. From the 1930s, it was officially as the Lichfield Public Assistance Institution, although many people in Lichfield continued to remember it as the workhouse.
With the introduction of the National Health Service, the workhouse became Saint Michael’s Hospital. It catered for about 140 patients, most of them being elderly. The former Master’s House in the rear range of the workhouse was registered as a listed building in 1998. The building became part of the Samuel Johnson Community Hospital in 2007.
Meanwhile, Scott and Moffat were working on one of their first churches, Saint John’s Church, Wall, near Lichfield (1839), at the same time as they were working on the workhouse in Lichfield. Their other early churches at this time included Saint Mary Magdalene, Flaunden, Hertfordshire (1838), Saint Nicholas, Newport, Lincoln (1839), and Saint Peter’s Church, Norbiton, Surrey (1841).
After completing their workhouse in Lichfield, Scott and Moffat built Reading Gaol (1841-1842) in a picturesque, castellated style. Around this time, Scott was inspired by Augustus Pugin to participate in the Gothic Revival, and while he was still in partnership with Moffat he designed the Martyrs’ Memorial on Saint Giles, Oxford (1841), and Saint Giles Church, Camberwell (1844).
Scott and Moffat had designed about 40 workhouses, including the Lichfield Workshop, when they parted company in 1845. It is said Scott’s wife Caroline (Oldrid) believed Moffat had become unreliable – indeed, Moffat was jailed as a debtor in 1860.
After their partnership ended, Scott carried on with his two sons as his assistants. His many notable buildings include the Midland Grand Hotel, St Pancras Station, the Albert Memorial, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow, the main building of the University of Glasgow, Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, and King’s College Chapel, London. His other works include Saint Mary the Virgin Church, London Road, Stony Stratford (1863-1865), now the Greek Orthodox Church, and the former vicarage, Stony House (1865).
In Lichfield, Scott is best remembered as the architect of Lichfield Cathedral from 1855 to 1878. He first restored the interior of the cathedral and then worked on the exterior, including the majestic West Front.
Scott died on 27 March 1878 and is buried in Westminster Abbey. His younger son, John Oldrid Scott (1841-1913), took over the practice and was the architect overseeing the restoration of the spire of Lichfield Cathedral.
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