Our Archival Collections
Forehoe Hundred
The Forehoe Hundred House
The workhouse at Wicklewood was constructed for the Hundred of Forehoe, Norfolk after the passage of Parliamentary legislation in 1776 for 23 parishes to incorporate for the purpose of relieving their poor and erecting a House of Industry. The Morning Post and Daily Advertiser opined that East Anglia’s “Hundred Houses” were “…salutary in all respects for the support of the poor; … that their poor may no longer remain in a starving condition, and the rates daily increasing.” Two types of documents are available here: The minutes of the weekly meetings of the governing committee of the House of Industry, and accounts known as “The Spinning Books of the Forehoe Hundred House. We are in the process of tagging these documents to make it possible to understand the nature and importance of work activities within the House of Industry, especially textile production and apprenticeship practices.
St Andrew Undershaft
The St. Andrew Undershaft Workhouse
The parish of St. Andrew Undershaft opened a workhouse in Bishopsgate Street in July 1733, gutting and redesigning “a House in Hand Alley … the most fitt and comodious place for a Workhouse that can bee found att present”. The minutes of the vestry and workhouse committee meetings have survived for the entire period of its existence, and we have posted this series, dated 1732-1834, which is currently stored at the London Metropolitan Archives under catalogue reference P69/AND4/B/048/MS04120/001 to 008 inclusive. We are in the process of tagging these documents to make individual life histories and major themes of workhouse life traceable over the workhouse’s history.