To find out more about workhouses in general, click on the image above
The first
workhouse in Forden union was built as a "House
of Industry"
in 1794-5. It cost £12,000 and was intended to house about 1000 inmates
from the border parishes. 
This
is an awful lot of people from a sparsely populated rural area. It seems
that the authorities were keen to get poor people shut
away where they could not be seen.
Once in the workhouse they
were men were housed separately from the women and children so that families
were split up. The food and accommodation kept people alive but were very
basic. The idea was to provide a "safety net" so that really
poor people did not actually starve to death, but
it was meant to be more like prison so that people
would try very hard to avoid it.
In
the early days inmates could be whipped or put in the stocks, or
be forced to wear a scolds bridle. (left)
(Click on the image to see more about the bridle from Forden workhouse)
Forden inmates made clothes, shoes, straw bonnets, and spun linen yarn. They worked in the gardens and on the workhouse farm and were taught how to butcher animals.
The
tithe map for Forden parish shows the House of Industry around 1840. (We
have coloured the actual buildings in to make them stand out.)
