Listed Building: Irthlingborough Casual Wards (1740/0/10013)

Former set of casual wards. 1933. By GH Lewin, County Surveyor for Northamptonshire 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. Venacular dormitory block further to the rear, all linked by an axial corridor. Two storeys. Fifteen 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 the centre. Similar windows to ground floor and door to centre right. Projecting single storey wing to the 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 out-shuts to front and rear and a clerestory above lit along the whole length by long casements. Detatched single storey workshop range in sinilar style, now in use as garage. INTERIOR. The original layout is legible. Room divisions and doors generally survive but few of the fittings. Front administration 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 eight twenty-bed dormitories. This set of casual wards is probably unique as a little altered survival of a detatched 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.

Record last edited

Jul 5 2021 3:24PM