contact
The Workhouse
Upton Road
Southwell
Notts
NG25 0PT
United Kingdom
Tel: 01-636- 817-260
» send e-mail
» Visit website
Workhouse Meals
Workhouse records from the 19th century describe an austere diet: Breakfast and supper were gruel or bread. Dinner was boiled meat and potatoes, or broth and bread, but on Saturdays they had suet pudding.
Even by the 1930s, meals were pretty uninviting, as this former Master recalls:
“Food-wise, breakfast and tea were not very clever. They were bread and margarine and a pint of tea, about all they’d get. …Dinner was a cooked meal which always seemed to be roast - not roast - BOILED, boiled mutton; boiled beef; boiled what-have-you. And I can see the cabbages. They used to throw them into these big cauldrons, I reckon about 10 o’clock in the morning. Came out like blotting paper, but it wasn’t.
Evening meal was the same, bread and margarine and tea…”
