THORNCOMBE’S WORKHOUSES

Income support and housing benefit funded by tax goes back nearly 600 years.  From 1536 until 1834 the dole was administered by parishes.  Surviving Overseers of the Poor and workhouse account books for Thorncombe, in the Dorset History Centre, cover most of the period, between 1722-1807.  They conjure a detailed picture of poor relief, through the payment of  rent,  provision of clothing,  shoes,  money for food and stays in the parish workhouse.

  Supporting parish paupers in their own homes was known as outdoor relief. Indoor relief referred to the provision of workhouse accommodation. The cost of poor relief   was met out of the poor rate, which was paid by local landowners into the parish pot. 

   An elegant system, the poor law subsidy drip fed its way back into tax payers’ pockets directly and indirectly. It maintained their rental income flow, and kept a work-force of men, women and children on-call at short notice at various times of year to work in the fields, which kept wage bills down.

  However, the early 18^th century population explosion and lack of jobs put the poor relief system under severe strain.  Knatchbull’s  1722  act attempted to address  the problem through the abolition of outdoor relief so that only indoor relief was on offer. Thorncombe opened  a parish workhouse in 1734. But it wasn’t its first.   

    While its name suggests that Workhouse Farm on High Street was the location, a note on the inside back cover of  Volume 2 of Thorncombe’s  parish registers records 1734  parish priest Thomas Cook  giving the house now known as Schoolhouse Farm  in trust to the parish in perpetuity for use  as a school and  parish workhouse. The account books record who ran it, how it was set up and organised.

   Outdoor relief payments stop in 1734. The only outgoings are for running costs of  ‘the House’.  Outdoor relief payments resume in 1738.  In his 1747 will Thomas Cook leaves his estate at Schoolhouse, to his servant Joan Bennet. Although not recorded in the account books, maybe the terms of the trust were broken with the closure of the parish workhouse, so Reverend Cook reclaimed his property?

  A new workhouse was set up in 1756. Perhaps this is where Workhouse Farm fits into the picture?  That said, new evidence regarding other Thorncombe parish properties used as workhouses has just been discovered among correspondence between the Poor Law Commission and the Guardians of the Axminster Poor Law Union in The National Archive.

  Administration of poor relief was centralised under the Poor Law Commission in 1834. New union workhouses were set up. Tough conditions were designed to persuade able-bodied paupers to actively seek employment wherever they could find it, forcing farmers to pay a regular living wage, rather than using poor relief to subsidise the quiet times of year.

   Thorncombe’s able-bodied parish paupers and their families were now sent to Axminster workhouse.  To fund it, parishes had to sell their own workhouses.  In 1837 Thorncombe sold Forsey and Peadon’s tenements for £62 to mason Bernard Phelps. Parish ownership of Forsey’s dates back to 1636 and Peadon’s to 1726.  Reference to the 1839 Tithe Map and the 1841 Census suggests they were on Fore Street, with Forsey’s on the site of Jubilee House, and Peadon’s among buildings near the Old Crown. Outgoings in the 18^th century accounts indicate that these properties were also used as parish workhouses .

   Then there’s Poor House Yard, marked next to the School House in Chard Street, opposite the church on the 1839 Tithe Map. Maybe it was used for elderly paupers who were initially maintained in the parish following the establishment of union  workhouses?  Perhaps Peadon’s and Forsey’s were also used for Thorncombe’s needy old folks at various times? 

                              Eve Higgs, January 2011