Our town through time - a brief history of Springwell house and Scarsdale hospital - video Dailymotion

A heritage guide to Chesterfield with historian Philip Riden

Transcript

00:00Hello, I'm Philip Ryden. I'm a retired member of the staff of the History Department of Nottingham

00:05University. I have a long-standing interest in the history of Chesterfield, my hometown.

00:10We're going to have a look at some of the more interesting buildings in the town centre this

00:14morning and I'll say something about the history of each of them. Under the 1834 Poor Law Amendment

00:19Act, Chesterfield became the centre of a very large poor law union for which a union workhouse

00:25was built on a new site on Newbold Road. This remained a very large workhouse throughout the

00:3119th century. It was eventually handed over to the National Health Service in 1948 and became

00:37Scarsdale Hospital which continued until the 1970s. Probably the most impressive building on the site

00:45and the one that's been retained is what is now called Springwell House which was built in 1896

00:51as the officers of the Poor Law Guardians, a substantial red brick late Victorian building

00:57still in use and rather more elaborately decorated than the very plain workhouse buildings of the

01:041830s, a handful of which have survived in the modern housing complex that is now to my left

01:11and to the left and to the left of the officers here.