Irthlingborough Casual Wards

IRTHLINGBOROUGH

1740/0/10013 A6 09-MAR-01 (Northeast side) Irthlingborough Casual Wards

II

Former set of casual wards. 1933. By GH Lewin, Northants. County Surveyor, for Northants. County Council Public Assistance Committee. Red brick with blue brick plinth and steps and artificial stone dressings. Slate roof with blue ridge tiles. Central ridge stack on front block. Vernacular style with small-pane metal casements. Front administrative block with day room behind and dormitory block further to rear, all linked by an axial corridor. 2 storeys. 15-window range in all at first floor of various size windows under brick cambered lintels, a few with key blocks. Large facing projecting gable to either end and smaller one to centre. Similar windows to ground floor and door to centre right. Projecting single-storey wing to left. To rear the single-storey day room with a row of casements, and further to rear the higher dormitory block designed with full-length outshuts to front and rear and a clerestory above lit along the whole length by long casements. Detached single-storey workshop range in similar style, now in use as garage. INTERIOR. The original layout is legible. Room divisions and doors generally survive but few of the fittings. Front administrative block had waiting room, accommodation for women tramps on two floors, duty room, and rooms for live-in staff, etc. Day room is behind. The ward block has 8 20-bed dormitories. This set of casual wards is probably unique as a little altered survival of a detached casual ward erected (following the abolition of the poor law in 1929) as a response to the Depression and the resultant rise in labourers searching for work as well as for vagrants and tramps.

Listing NGR: SP9526971060