Wales’ first workhouse museum opens in Llanfyllin

The opening of Wales’s first workhouse museum last month has been described as an important day for the country’s heritage and tourism.

For too long heritage attractions told only the story of the rich and powerful and overlooked the lives of
ordinary people. In recent years, the balance has begun to shift, but Wales has had nothing to compare with the National Trust’s well known Workhouse at Southwell or workhouse museums like Ripon, Gressenhall or Derry.

The Llanfyllin Union Workhouse in North Powys, close to the border and to Lake Vyrnwy, is among the best preserved in Britain.  It’s typical of the workhouses built under the New Poor Law of 1834: an imposing stone building with four courtyards dominated by the Master’s House at its centre.

Owned by a local trust and set in six acres of beautiful countryside, it’s being developed as a community enterprise.  There’s a bunkhouse, workshops, a gallery, venue and café-bar available for weddings and private functions.

Thanks to a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, it’s possible to tell the story of the Workhouse and shed more light on the lives of poor people in Victorian Wales.

The new Workhouse History Centre, housed in the least altered part of the building, includes bilingual displays, which show how the New Poor Law aimed to cut the cost of benefits and reduce dependency. Other displays, rich in images, focus on workhouse life for adults and children, including the workhouse school.

There are folders of historical documents for anyone who wants to find out more, but the centrepiece is a film in which the ghost of the first Master, William Jones, guides visitors around the Workhouse and brings it back to life.

Visitors will meet the ghosts of other people who were there in the 1840s: 11-year-old Martha and her little brother, parted from their mother who sits picking oakum; the formidable Guardian Thomas Menlove and the defiant single mother Anne Lewis with her ‘little bastard’.

All the actors are local people and the film is on view, in Welsh or English, at the touch of a button.  For younger visitors there’s a family trail around the courtyards, where interpretation panels give more information.  For those with an interest in history, a study room is open by appointment.

There’s plenty of parking as well as toilets and visitors are welcome to wander round the grounds.

The Workhouse History Centre is open every day between 10am and 5pm (4pm in winter).  Admission is free, although a donation is appreciated and school or other groups are welcome.

The Workhouse stands beside the A490 just outside the town, around 20 minutes from Welshpool or Lake Vyrnwy.  The postcode is SY22 5LD, though satnav directions for the final stage can be misleading.

Llanfyllin is one of only two Welsh boroughs to have received its charter from a native Prince of Wales. With an attractive square and church, the historic St Myllin’s Well and an interesting area of wetland close to the car park, it’s well worth a visit.  

Picture captions:

The new Workhouse History Centre in Llanfyllin.

One of the displays in the Workhouse History Centre.

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For more information please call Llanfyllin Workhouse History Centre on Tel: 01691 649 062