Wexford Workhouse is situated in the northwest of Wexford Town. The building consists of a three-storey central block flanked by separate male and female accommodation wings, with a master’s quarters at its centre.
It served as the town’s hospital from December 1928 until March 1992. Following its closure, it became known as “the Old Hospital.”
Today, it stands derelict and boarded-up.
Famine
Built under the Poor Law (Ireland) Act of 1838, it was initially designed to accommodate 600 inmates. During the Great Famine, however, that number rose to 1,771.
County Wexford’s population fell from 202,033 in 1841 to 180,158 in 1851, a decline of roughly 11 per cent. Although the county fared better than parts of the west of Ireland, many working-class families suffered as a result of a prolonged agricultural depression.
A report published by the Wexford Independent in 1847 described the worsening situation, noting that the number of beggars in Wexford was “surprising.” Many exhibited a “misery and hunger” that was “indescribable by words.” The report noted “cheeks like scorched leather,” sunken eyes, voices that sounded as if they were “emanating from a tomb,” and accents “inaudible from weakness.”
Fevers
Between 1848 and 1853, more than 1,700 people died within its walls, largely as a result of what officials described as “dangerous epidemics.”
These “contagious fevers” made the crowded workhouse a deadly environment for staff as well as inmates. Two masters died of illnesses within a very short period.
The weekly “Estimate of requirements” for oatmeal, buttermilk, turf, and candles regularly included orders for coffins. One order specified “two large coffins, one small coffin,” alongside 300 yards of shrouding calico, a cotton fabric that was used to wrap bodies.
Other weeks recorded even higher mortality, particularly among the young. The demand for coffins was so continuous that the Board of Guardians put supply out to tender for 12-month contracts, exactly as they did for bread or shoes.
Many of those who died in the workhouse were carted away and buried in unmarked graves in Coolcotts.
Life inside the workhouse
The management of the workhouse was plagued by staffing irregularities and negligence. In January 1854, an inspector reported that a man was found dead at the gate of the workhouse. Evidence showed the man had been rapping at the gate for admission during the night, but neither the porter nor the master heard him. Official enquiries revealed the porter was occasionally “affected with liquor,” and the assistant master regularly failed to sleep on the premises, leaving the facility poorly supervised at night.
Stringent regulations governed life inside the institution. These were specifically designed to dissuade able-bodied people from seeking free food and shelter.
Authorities confiscated all personal belongings and issued a standard-issue uniform. Upon entering, staff immediately split up families. Parents were forbidden from seeing their children, and husbands and wives were banned from communicating.
Inmates rose at 6am, with roll call at 6.30am. Day-to-day duties included carpentry, tailoring, sewing, building, cooking, cleaning, stone-smashing, and farming.
The diet was basic. Children received oatmeal, Indian meal, buttermilk, and brown bread, occasionally supplemented with soup. Paupers were given two meals per day of potatoes, oatmeal, and bread.
The scarcity of food and desperate conditions frequently led to violence among the inmates. On the night of 6 April 1854, a 14-year-old boy named John Burke stabbed a 12-year-old boy, Michael Doyle, with a knife in the dormitory “for refusing to give him the bread which he (Doyle) had gotten for his supper.”
Minutes of meetings from the early 1850s show that extra rations were only granted under exceptional circumstances.
Inmates tasked with “most offensive work” were provided an extra allowance of bread and tea. These jobs included washing the clothes of sick inmates, removing human waste from the “soil waggons” (overflowing toilet buckets), or guarding the potato crops at night.
On rare occasions, such as Christmas Day, the Board of Guardians empowered the master to purchase enough meat to provide the inmates with a special dinner.
Rule-breakers faced a range of punishments. Common offences included fighting, refusing to work, deserting the premises, and using indecent expressions. Lesser infractions were met with penalties such as having milk rations stopped or losing dinner for a week. More serious infractions could mean solitary confinement for periods ranging from eight hours to several days, hard labour breaking stones, or flogging. The most severe punishments included 24 lashes, being brought before the Magistrates at Petty Sessions, and being sent to jail.
Overcrowding
As the Great Famine deepened, the workhouse became overwhelmed. By 1851, the complex had grown to include a main building, temporary buildings, additional auxiliary workhouses, a permanent fever hospital, and fever sheds for 40 people. Despite these expansions, facilities remained chronically over capacity, with weekly inmate populations routinely exceeding 1,520 in late 1851. Officers reported that the daily average number of inmates over the preceding six years was nearly 1,200.
Conditions within the workhouse and its auxiliary buildings were frequently dilapidated and unsanitary. The Stone Bridge facility was particularly poorly maintained. Women were described as “slovenly in appearance,” and the facility had little order or regularity. Broken panes of glass, dirty floors, stairs, and dormitories were common, along with an overpowering “smell of smoking” in the wards. Inmate clothing was often described as “ragged” and dirty.
The matron’s bedroom and the fever hospital had floors made of “weeping flags,” large flat stones laid directly on bare earth without any damp-proofing. In wet weather, water accumulated beneath the stones and seeped to the surface, creating hazardous conditions that required straw mats to keep the floors usable.
Medical care was similarly strained. The workhouse hospital was frequently overcrowded, and the Board of Guardians heavily relied on healthy paupers to act as assistant nurses, ward maids, and hospital attendants. In one recorded incident, a “pauper lunatic” was found in a filthy condition in a female cell. The infirmary nuns had neglected their duty, and the matron admitted she had not entered the cell for three weeks. The Guardians subsequently ordered her to inspect all departments of the hospital daily.
In 1908, a serious water supply failure occurred at the workhouse. The Master reported to the Guardians that it had nearly failed, leaving the hospital almost dry. They decided to call on a “water-finder,” someone using a divining rod, to try to solve the problem.
“The Old Hospital”
On June 2, 1921, a conference of delegates representing the Enniscorthy, Gorey, New Ross, and Wexford workhouses met and adopted a resolution in favour of “workhouse amalgamation.” The conference proposed abolishing the four buildings while retaining, properly equipping, and converting the existing medical facilities into district hospitals. Dáil Éireann approved the proposed scheme later that year.
While the legal mandate to abolish the workhouse system was issued in October 1921, the physical closures and transitions extended into 1922.
In 1923, the committee decided to maintain the hospital in the former workhouse buildings. It noted that “any prejudice which existed against the building, owing to its having been a workhouse, was dying out.”
By the 1970s, the building had become dilapidated. Health officials in the southeast began to fight for funds to develop a new facility, arguing that the former workhouse was ill-equipped and no longer suitable for use. After more than a decade of campaigning, the Department of Health finally approved financing a new general hospital.
The project contract was signed in 1988, and construction was largely completed by late 1991.
The new hospital opened on 3 March 1992.
Following its closure, the workhouse interior was stripped out. Windows, floorboards, sinks, and doors were removed for use in refurbishment projects across County Wexford. In November 1994, town councillor Padge Reck warned that the building had already fallen into disrepair and called for its preservation.
Two years later, newspapers reported that the Wexford County Council had yet to decide on whether to include the former workhouse as a listed building. Officials from the health board opposed proposals to save the building and claimed that money allocated to Wexford General Hospital would be spent elsewhere if its demolishment wasn’t approved.
During a meeting about the topic in January 1996, Councillor Jim Walsh warned, “I suspect the health board’s response to us including the hospital as a listed building would be to allow it to deteriorate. If this motion is passed, it will be a pyrrhic victory, and if defeated, it will be giving carte blanche to the Health Board to do what they want.”
Today, the workhouse building is structurally unsafe and closed to the public.
In 2011, Wexford Borough Council served its owner, the HSE, with a dangerous structures notice.
All information sourced from newspaper archives and minutes of meetings from the Wexford Corporation, Wexford Union Workhouse, and Wexford County Council.
Map
The building is situated on Old Hospital Road, just west of Spawell Road: