Enniskillen Workhouse

Engraved on the floor as you enter the newly restored Enniskillen Workhouse are the words of WB Yeats, “A pity beyond all telling” from his poem, The Pity of Love. The concept of the workhouse can send a shiver down the spine, the buildings being designed both to provide relief for the poor of the parish but also to deter them from too readily availing themselves of such help as was offered. As Curl notes “… the architecture itself was often as repellent as the régime. It is no accident that Union workhouses were hated and feared, and that even their appearance could chill stout hearts.” 1 In 1839 the Oxford architect, George Wilkinson, was employed by the Poor Law Commissioners for Ireland as their architect to design and build their workhouses. Initially appointed for one year, he was to remain in post until 1855. The workhouses he designed, Enniskillen being one of them, had three main parts: the front building, the main building or “body of the house”, and the infirmary building. In his survey of Ulster workhouses, Gould records that the Enniskillen workhouse was completed on the 19th March 1844 for 1000 inmates.2 It closed in 1948 but continued to serve as a hospital, being gradually subsumed into the new Erne Hospital before all but the front building was demolished to make way for South West College’s Erne Campus. When the Johnston Bridge was built in 1954, the orientation of the hospital changed, and the old workhouse now faces the former approach via Erne Rd, becoming less of an entrance as originally intended, being located at the rear of the campus.

THE TEAM

Client Fermanagh and Omagh District Council /South West College

Architects Hamilton Architects on behalf of Kriterion Conservation Architects

Project Manager esc construction consultants

Quantity Surveyor esc construction consultants

M& E Engineer Semple & McKillop

Structural Engineers RPS Group

Main Contractor

QMAC Construction Ltd

Photography

John McVitty Photography

Thanks to strong local support, the remaining front building of the workhouse was Grade B2 listed and, happily, is not of the repellent design referred to by Curl above. Described by Dixon in the UAHS list of buildings in Enniskillen as “of squared random masonry, with a five-bay, two-storey gabled front. The wing bays, larger than the others, advance slightly, and two sets of four chimneys, each with a single binding cornice, rise impressively from the roof. The only other embellishments are hood mouldings for windows, the shaping of the gable copings, and the thick chamfer of the Tudor entrance above which is a shield with the incised date 1841”.3 Thanks to careful conservation work by Kriterion (Hamilton Architects’ conservation arm) this description remains true today.

The workhouse now has a new lease of life thanks to a creative collaboration between Fermanagh and Omagh District Council (FODC) and South West College (SWC) with funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. The old workhouse building now serves as a heritage centre and business enterprise hub. A particularly pleasing element of this redevelopment project was the incorporation of a training programme which provided hands-on experience for apprentices and local craftspeople in such traditional skills as stone masonry, plastering and joinery. The partnership between SWC and FODC will continue to offer fruitful opportunities for training and for mentoring start-up businesses; in addition, event, seminar and work spaces are available to rent.

Another excellent aspect of the project is the weaving-in of artefacts relating to the history of the workhouse with displays for visiting groups of all ages. Managed by the Fermanagh County Museum and located on the ground floor, the exhibition and heritage elements of the building sit comfortably and subtly alongside the modern uses of the building. Modern partitions have been removed to reveal the original roof trusses and the room names from around the workhouse site have been used in the restored building where appropriate.

The workhouse bell greets the visitor on arrival and the old porter’s lodge is now the reception office. The interiors, by revealing original fabric and features, give some sense of what it was like for those who arrived in the building – possibly the largest and grandest, apart from churches, that they had ever entered. Some of the workhouse records and artefacts such as an 1859 child’s bible, pairs of shoes found in the attic and ox teeth found in the grounds are now on display as part of the evocative museum exhibits. It is thought that traditionally a single shoe was hidden in buildings for luck and so the team have put back a shoe, in a box made from redundant floorboards, in the attic where it was found as a mark of respect for past traditions.

The building was not without its challenges but the architects working closely throughout with FODC and SWC have managed to retain as many of the original features as possible while providing the services required for the building’s new purpose. The approach was to make new insertions obvious while revealing the 19th century features where possible and, in the process, stripping back earlier and sometimes inappropriate attempts at renovation. Throughout the building glimpses of the past are revealed by retaining old stonework, timber beams, original ironmongery, quarry tiles and limestone flagstones. Concealed fireplaces were opened up; doors and windows repaired or replaced, replicating the original design; roof slates were removed and replaced with a new vapour barrier inserted, and the old cement mortar was removed, and the walls were repaired using lime mortar and lime plaster. As well as the challenges faced in restoring an old building, especially at a time of budgetary restraints and shortage of labour and materials, there are the unexpected finds along the way: one example here being the recovery of one of the distinctive chimney-stacks from the site which was able to be reused with minimal repair.

The new insertions clearly and rightly stand out as such. The old courtyard has been glazed over to provide an excellent exhibition and seminar space; in the rear yard an obviously, even proudly, modern glazed projection houses a lift and staircase, giving access to the innovation hub on the first floor which also houses workstations, breakout areas, a meeting room and toilets.

There are many other workhouses looking for new uses and there is much to admire and to learn from in the approach taken at Enniskillen. It is unfortunate that the context has been lost with the main building, yards and fever hospital long gone and the remaining front building slightly isolated in a sea of tarmac and car parking at the rear of the campus. It is nonetheless a handsome building providing a strong link to the past. The two yew trees mentioned in the Enniskillen list flourish still; and they have been joined by a third, marking the location of the tree seen in Wilkinson’s plans. There is also some excellent new paving denoting the route taken by inmates to the main building. When time and money permits, it would be wonderful to initiate a landscaping project to soften the surroundings and round off a highly commendable scheme. 

Karen Latimer

References

1. Curl, JS. The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture. 3rd ed. OUP, 2015. p.849.

2. Gould, M. The Workhouses of Ulster. UAHS, 1983. p.23.

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