Our Story
The Workhouse Institution
Of the 163 workhouses that once stood in Ireland 52 have been demolished. There are 66 workhouses, like Enniskillen, where only the entrance block survives, others have been partially demolished. The remainder lie in ruins.
Given that so few survive it was crucial to provide an effective & accessible use of Enniskillen workhouse and an understanding of why it was there.
The workhouse regime & population
The system was not designed to deal with the enormity of the crisis triggered by the failure of the potato crop; nevertheless, it became a vehicle by which relief was administered.
The workhouse buildings
Throughout Ireland outside or just on the edge of most county towns are buildings that are something like a hospital, something like a jail, something like courthouse. Workhouses designed by Wilkinson are unmistakable on our landscape. One of the most striking aspects of the buildings is their uniformity, built from local limestone and as Wilkinson said to show “harmony and proportion and simplicity of arrangement.” The style of the building he said is intended to be of the cheapest description compatible with durability. The gabled roofs and elevated chimney shafts were to give the workhouses a pleasant pleasing and picturesque appearance.”
Incredibly, of all the deaths in Ireland during the famine, 1 in 5 occurred in a workhouse. This figure was reflected in the Enniskillen Workhouse where 2,040 people of the 10,000 who entered the house died. (December 1845-Spring 1849.)
‘Better off thrown behind a ditch’, Enniskillen Workhouse during the Great Famine’ Source: Desmond McCabe, Office of Public Works, Dublin, and Cormac Ó Gráda, University College Dublin
Enniskillen Workhouse
“As the only largely intact survivor of the former Enniskillen Union Workhouse, this “front” building has become an important artefact in terms of the social history of Enniskillen and its hinterland.
Designed by George Wilkinson, it is an impressive building despite the loss of the remainder of workhouse buildings. Workhouses in N. Ireland are now becoming increasingly rare with many other examples having been totally demolished or more substantially altered.”
Source: doeni.gov.uk/buildings/buildview
Enniskillen Union
Weekly report of the conditions in the workhouse from the Impartial Reporter begin with: ‶ The State of the House.”
These weekly reports provide detailed, graphic descriptions of all aspects of life and death in the house; often making for uncomfortable reading.
A place of refuge for those who needed help
Ordinarily, the value of a building is determined by its architecture; but there was nothing unique about its design. Instead, what makes Enniskillen workhouse so important is the people who walked through its doors, their stories, their lives and often their deaths. The lives of those people who worked or lived in any building can tell a far greater tale then the building itself.
A lady who worked in the workhouse in later years recalled:
‶In the morning inmates got a half pint of milk and a quarter of a loaf for herself and the child. The porridge was very thick. They had to carry their spoons, knives, and forks in a belt. They had no heating. They had to do the washing for the whole hospital. A lot of the children were girls who became pregnant, and nobody wanted them. They became slaves in that place.”
‶When the children died nobody knew anything about it. They were buried without recognition. Hundreds of children were buried there. ″
(The Paupers′ Graveyard, Cornagrade)
The workhouse building acts as a visual reminder of how society viewed and treated those with financial problems, mental health issues, unmarried mothers, and their children
Timeline of historical events
Individual Stories: The three empty chairs
The most important element of the restoration project has been to give voice to stories never told or long forgotten.
To say out loud the names of the those who lived and died in the workhouse; names no one remembers. To allow the frail famine voices to reach across the decades and other voices too.
The project has amplified their once silent existence, allowing us to reclaim our workhouse ghosts from their enforced silence and invisibility.
Alice Ball
Alice was 16 when she boarded the Diadem for Melbourne in 1850; her sister Jane was on board too. Alice had been in Enniskillen Workhouse. She could neither read nor write. Her employer was John Brown, a sail maker in Richmond, Melbourne. Alice committed suicide by throwing herself in the Yarra River, Melbourne, after becoming pregnant to her married master. Alice was one of 107 girls who left Australia from Enniskillen Workhouse on the Earl Grey Scheme.
William Fife’s Children
William Fife was a small farmer in the townland of Drumcullion, one-mile south-west of Ballinamallard on the road to Enniskillen. William was father to five emigrants who travelled to New South Wales, 1859-64.
Fife wrote to all his children; letters which portray the sense of permanent loss.
“My Dear children you may think this strang of your Father. Althoug, I parted with you in Body my heart and the affections of a Father went with yous.”
On his children’s boat leaving port he writes:
“The cry of my heart at the moment was Farwell, Farewell Farewell My Children though not one tear could I drop.”
He wrote too of the continued sense of vulnerability living as a farmer in Ireland
In one letter, 1881 he wrote:
“There is many in this Country and there is but one Step Between them and Beggary.” He muses that he might “spend the last of my days in the poor House.”
Mary Woods
“Mary Woods, whose husband died but a few weeks ago of fever, & since which time she had no refuge for herself & her 5 children, died on some straw beside the wall in Hall’s Lane.” Impartial Reporter 03-06-1847 The admission records will be available for people to search at the workhouse. Records available are from 1844-1917.e
