Thursday 30 April Downpatrick Union Workhouse: Dr Finbar McCormick

Our next meeting will be held on Thursday 30 April in Down County Museum when the guest speaker, Dr Finbar McCormick, will be sharing his extensive research on the topic of Downpatrick Union Workhouse.

The lecture deals with the early decades of Downpatrick Union Workhouse, which opened in 1842 to help alleviate poverty and destitution in an area that stretched from Castlewellan to the Ards, and from Dundrum to Crossgar. Dr McCormick’s talk will show how the workhouse was established and governed by its board of guardians and staff of masters, matrons, teachers, doctors and porters. The monotonous diet of the paupers and the effects of the Great Famine, which caused the workhouse to be filled to capacity, will also be considered. The talk looks at the lives of the paupers who were driven to enter the doors of the workhouse, where they came from, their former occupations, and the work that they were obliged to do while in the workhouse.

Dr McCormick’s lecture considers the desperate lives experienced by paupers, many of whom returned to the workhouse again and again, having failed to find support for themselves outside its walls. The talk explores the many problems that arose in the running of the workhouse, which included scandals among the staff, arguments between paupers, and various religious controversies.

Dr Finbar McCormick is the President of the Lecale & Downe Historical Society and formerly taught Archaeology at Queen’s University, Belfast. His interests include local history, early medieval settlement and holy wells. Among his many publications, Dr McCormick has recently edited, along with American anthropologist Celeste Ray, Holy Wells of Ireland: Sacred Realms and Popular Domains.

The talk is free for members of the Society. Guests are most welcome (entry is £5 and includes tea/coffee).
The Lecale & Downe Historical Society hopes to raise funds by selling donated non-fiction books on local history, historical biography and general history. Past copies of Lecale Review and/or Lecale Miscellany - always in demand - will be available for sale at meetings.