Historic Foundations

Old Saint Michaels was built as a Union workhouse in 1837-8 by Royston architects, William Nash. William was 38 when he designed Old Saint Michaels and he based his design on an 1835 model plan produced by Samson Kempthorne. Old Saint Michaels is a rare example of a hexagon plan workhouse with a Y-shaped main building and is the last remaining of its kind in Essex.

The Kempthorne “Y” plan traditionally had a central “hub” from which radiated accommodation wings for the different classes of inmate defined by the Commissioners – infirm males, infirm females, able-bodied males, able-bodied females, boys, girls, and children under seven. Each complex also had an entrance or administrative block at the far end of one of the wings, infirmaries and chapels and other larger buildings were often added to the basic shape. Ancillary, single-storey perimeter buildings gave each workhouse its distinctive hexagonal outline. The grounds were used as exercise yards, segregated according to class.

In 1948, the workhouse became part of the newly formed National Health Service. The ensuing changes and additions were often rather unsympathetic to the original buildings.

The buildings that exist today comprise the “Y” with its three, three-storey ranges and front entrance block flanked by the later infirmary wings. Many of the outbuildings and boundary walls arranged around the hexagonal perimeter also survive, as well as part of the original infirmary, casual and receiving wards and board room. Other workhouse original features include its bakery and laundry, complete with weighing scales!