Arundel Poor Law Union, Sussex

History
Methods of poor relief used in Arundel in the 17th and 18th centuries were apprenticing, usually to Arundel masters, weekly pay, boarding out, and the provision of clothing and medical care. Between the mid 17th century and the early 19th the overseers also distributed endowed charitable doles. In the 18th century rent, fuel, and food and drink were provided, and a payment was made for schooling in 1772. There was a poorhouse in the north-west part of the town by 1682, when a room with a loft over it was to be built presumably nearby; its site seems to have been on the east side of Park Place, where a possibly 17th-century range survives behind the mid 19th-century workhouse. Expenditure on linen, thread, yarn, and knitting needles in 1678 and later was presumably for work to be done at the poorhouse, and the 'town house' where poor children and apparently widows lived in 1713 was probably the same building. In 1779–80 a new 'workhouse' was built in its garden. Arundel was a single parish under Gilbert's Act, 1782. The appointment of an assistant overseer by c. 1814 had greatly reduced the rise of poor-law expenditure by 1834. Another workhouse, of flint with brick dressings, was built in 1831 on the east side of Park Place, evidently on the site of the earlier building. Clothing was supplied to inmates in the 1830s, when weekly pay was also given. In 1832 between four and twenty labourers a week were out of work in winter and none in summer. Arundel remained separate for poor-law purposes after 1835, the workhouse having 41 inhabitants in 1841, 33 inmates in 1851, and 15 in 1861. A standing committee for the relief of the necessitous poor existed between 1838 and 1842, and included the mayor, the churchwardens, and religious leaders; money was raised from subscriptions and the holding of concerts, and the committee distributed bread weekly in winter at a reduced price. In 1869 Arundel was added to East Preston union, which conveyed the town workhouse to the duke of Norfolk in 1873. During the earlier 20th century it was a club house and in 1985–6 it was converted into flats.

From: 'Arundel', A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 5 Part 1: Arundel Rape: south-western part, including Arundel (1997), pp. 10-101. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=22937&amp;strquery=Arundel Date accessed: 04 May 2011.

Arundel had a parish workhouse in the 1680's and later formed a Gilbert Union in the 1780's. In 1831 a workhouse was built at Poor House Hill (later Mount Pleasant). The Gilbert Union exempted it from the provisions of the Poor Law Amendment Act until the Gilbert Unions were abolished in 1869.

The workhouse was used as a small pox hospital for a while but has now been converted into residential flats.

For more information on the history of the workhouse, see Peter Higginbotham's web site: www.workhouses.org.uk and http://www.workhouses.org.uk/index.html?Arundel/Arundel.shtml

Parish
Arundel, Sussex