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Fir Vale Workhouse


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Screenshot 2020-04-07 at 19.51.00.jpg

The Sheffield Union Workhouse at Fir Vale

 

I don't know if this link has been posted before but it's worth a reminder for those have not seen this site.

http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Sheffield/

Most of the page is devoted to Fir Vale, but you need to scroll down a bit before you get there 

Some amazing photos and interesting details of the 'cottage homes' around the Abbeyfield area.

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Gramps said:
I don't know if this link has been posted before but it's worth a reminder for those have not seen this site.

http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Sheffield/

Most of the page is devoted to Fir Vale, but you need to scroll down a bit before you get there smile.gif

Some amazing photos and interesting details of the 'cottage homes' around the Abbeyfield area.

I think we have but it is excellent - I was looking at a couple of those houses on Abbeyfield and on Scott Road and thought there was something unusual about them.

I was also wondering how they windened the Workhouse gates and seeing the photo on here I realised there were double gate posts and they have removed the inner set!

biggrin.gif

Sheffield_Jan_2009_130.JPG

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Screenshot 2020-04-07 at 19.51.00.jpg

Fir Vale Workhouse looked a really intimidating and worrying place from the outside. Quite a dramatic building

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Screenshot 2020-04-07 at 19.49.50.jpg

Sheffield Union Workhouse, Fir Vale, Sheffield

Women ward staff and inmates, Sheffield Union Workhouse after the First World War.

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Lynn Howsam wrote a book enititled Life in the Workhouse & Old Hospital at Fir Vale: The Story of the Northern General Hospital, Sheffield available on Amazon

 

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48 minutes ago, johnm said:

Lynn Howsam wrote a book enititled Life in the Workhouse & Old Hospital at Fir Vale: The Story of the Northern General Hospital, Sheffield available on Amazon

 

 


Thank you - will hunt that down!

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Normally the books are available for sale in the hospitals charity shop in the Huntsman entrance of the Northern General hospital but I am not sure if it is open at the moment. 2 on the workhouse and one about the on and off site children's homes too. 

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It was still a very foreboding place in the early 1950s when , renamed Firvale Infirmary, my late Grandmother was a patient in a "geriatric" ward there. As a young visitor( smuggled in by my Mum...children were verboten) I found it very grim indeed!!!

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It's a gorgeous building! 😍 - The negative is from knowing it's past association with death, poverty, the misery and stigma of no choice; it's not the building itself? Imagine it's a library or town hall.. (I find 'modern'/60s style blocks to be the scary ones! The new construction in town so unnecessarily ugly and demoralising, squatting over like they're arrogantly intended to say your city's history never mattered) - My relatives share the N'Gen aversion, the spookiness that most raised in 20thC Sheffield feel about the place, though one who worked there years also liked that the grounds are a wildlife oasis; foxes, owls, ect! 
Real shame the Workhouse Records got destroyed; Council claim 'most' were lost in 1940s air-raids, other sites say most were deliberately destroyed in 1970s, either way gone and a big loss to our history. Researching ancestry - a far more depressing pastime than I'd anticipated as they were all poor; lives of unfair grimness & tragedy that make mine seem an over-privileged picnic - I've found many connections to Sheff. Workhouses. As well as the valuable book and the site mentioned above (where I found a photo' of a 'Scattered' foster home with a distant relative on; very precious)- I found this link, not sure it's much use, but might be to someone - many records are currently free to access online via FindMyPast, due to Sheff Library being CoronaV-closed; have to email Archives dept for a password. 
http://www.calmview.eu/SheffieldArchives/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=CA41

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It may ,externally, have looked "gorgeous"  but internally my experience, as a young visitor to the "geriatric wards, was that it was Grim!

I well remember as a pupil at Hucklow Road Junior School ( I left in 1952) that the headteacher ( Miss Wragg) had keys to the grounds known by us as the "Plantation". On fine sunny days ,occasionally as a treat, classes would be taken across Barnsley Road and thence via a small door in the wall for an afternoons " nature adventure". We walked through the plantation observing nature until we reached an open space by the stream running at the bottom of Longley Hall farm..... played a few games and then returned as a happy bunch of kids...indeed,  the grounds were a wild life oasis!

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On 03/01/2009 at 19:25, Guest Gramps said:

Screenshot 2020-04-07 at 19.51.00.jpg

The Sheffield Union Workhouse at Fir Vale

 

I don't know if this link has been posted before but it's worth a reminder for those have not seen this site.

http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Sheffield/

Most of the page is devoted to Fir Vale, but you need to scroll down a bit before you get there 

Some amazing photos and interesting details of the 'cottage homes' around the Abbeyfield area.

This is fascinating stuff as i have a vested interest in this area. Thank you.

One question for everyone,  the very bottom picture on the workhouses link is of Smilter Lane Aged Homes. Does anyone know where this would have been on a modern map or if any bit of the building remains now? 

Many thanks.

 

 

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1 hour ago, arrowhead said:

This is fascinating stuff as i have a vested interest in this area. Thank you.

One question for everyone,  the very bottom picture on the workhouses link is of Smilter Lane Aged Homes. Does anyone know where this would have been on a modern map or if any bit of the building remains now? 

Many thanks.

 

 

Smilter Lane was what is now Herries Road. The Workhouse was a short distance to the right coming up Herries Road from Fir Vale.

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2 hours ago, arrowhead said:

This is fascinating stuff as i have a vested interest in this area. Thank you.

One question for everyone,  the very bottom picture on the workhouses link is of Smilter Lane Aged Homes. Does anyone know where this would have been on a modern map or if any bit of the building remains now? 

Many thanks.

 

 

Nothing remains of the Aged Homes - they were just below the Childrens homes on the Herries Rd (smilterLane) side of the Workhouse grounds. 

Children's homes, old foks quarters & vagrants 1905.jpeg

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Ah! So Smilter Lane was the original name for Herries Road. Thanks JohnM and Lyn1.

Reason i asked was, in the workhouses link there was a list of scattered homes. That mentioned Ivy Cottage and Rose Cottage as being on Smilter Lane. Now both of these houses are still around albeit on Crabtree Drive and Crabtree Road. So i thought maybe Smilter Lane was was an old road that has since been build over (ie crabtree housing estate).

But i would guess, those two properties had Smilter Lane as the address as that was probably the only, or at least the closest road, to them. 

 

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Ivy & Rose cottages were within the hospital grounds. There were 3 houses in total and all were demolished c 1993. You can see their position marked in the yellow area of the map. 

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15 hours ago, Lyn 1 said:

Ivy & Rose cottages were within the hospital grounds. There were 3 houses in total and all were demolished c 1993. You can see their position marked in the yellow area of the map. 

I think Ivy & Rose Cottages were used as nurses changing rooms when my wife was there in early 1970's.

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17 hours ago, Lyn 1 said:

Ivy & Rose cottages were within the hospital grounds. There were 3 houses in total and all were demolished c 1993. You can see their position marked in the yellow area of the map. 

I think i have got wrong end of stick! The house I'm thinking of is actually called the Ivies. Although there is definitely a rose cottage (which on the old maps looks to be called Home(?) cottage possibly.

But at least I've learned something 🙂

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On 10/02/2021 at 23:04, Hopman said:

It's not been misread as The Limes, has it?

No, the limes is a totally different building. 

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I worked at Fir Vale in 1960/61 as a junior clerk (trainee administrator was my proper title) when it was still a 1200 bed psycho-geriatric hospital with a matron and hospital secretary, a Mr Stanier, and was one of about 20 admin staff including the almoner, Mrs Richardson, the accounts dept, general office, the pensions dept (Jim Turner and Jim Taylor) and stores (Mr Fox) . Today I expect there would be ten times as many people running it.  I used to play the chapel organ in my lunch breaks, or have a game of snooker in the Coleridge ward. It was a genuinely happy place even though there was an acceptance that old people went there to die.  The saddest ward was the locked psychiatric wards where many young people were kept locked up who today would be described simply as autistic or having learning difficulties. I didn't stay in the health service but much later had occasion to be involved in the "Care In The Community" dispersal of such places. I have never been convinced that what has happened to social care ever since was anything of an improvement. There were economies of scale which have never been matched in the private care sector. There were also very dedicated staff working under a disciplined Matron. Many people would like to see that status restored. 

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My granny was a patient there in the early 1950s.I was too young to officially go visiting with Mum but often sneaked past the guard. As I recall it was a pretty grim place and almost as bad as having to spend an hour in the guard house if caught creeping past the window!

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The guard house you are referring to was the porters lodge,  one for FVI at the bottom at Fir Vale gates and one on Herries road entrance for the CGH. No one could enter without the porter's say so, unlike today. 

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I was being a tad sarcastic referring to it as a “guard house”!... As a young lad caught by said Porter at Fir Vale, spending an hour , sat on a chair, twiddling my thumbs waiting for Mum was an absolute misery.🙂

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