Search for your Welsh ancestor in these records from the Abergavenny workhouse in Monmouthshire. Explore workhouse admissions, medical notices, religious creed registers, and school admission records. You will discover when your ancestor entered the workhouse and your ancestor’s reason for leaving.
Search for your Welsh ancestor in these records from the Abergavenny workhouse in Monmouthshire. Explore workhouse admissions, medical notices, religious creed registers, and school admission records. You will discover when your ancestor entered the workhouse and your ancestor’s reason for leaving.
Each record will give you both a transcript and an image of the original record from the archive. The detail found in each record will vary depending on the type of document. Most transcripts will provide you with a combination of the following details:
Images
The images will be able to give you even more detail about your ancestor. Below we have listed each document type and the facts you can ascertain from each.
Admission and discharge books for both casual paupers and vagrants, 1843-1923
District medical relief lists 1860-1910
Register of pauper cases refused, 1877-1890
Register of paupers and orders of removal, 1858-1859
Not all the fields are complete for each entry.
Register of relief on loan, 1877-1890
Religious Creed Register, 1868-1911
School admission and discharge book, 1843-1889
Superannuation register, 1866-1929
Not all fields are complete for each entry
The Wales, Monmouthshire workhouse registers, 1837-1929 records are retained by the Gwent Archives. The records focus on the Abergavenny Union. The Abergavenny Union was formed in 1837. The workhouse was located in Hatherleigh Place, Abergavenny. By 1891 the workhouse held 189 inmates. Workhouses were managed by the local poor law union. In order to deter paupers from entering the workhouse, the buildings were designed to look intimidating and prison-like.
This collection comprises a range of documents from the workhouse that can enlighten you to the life of your ancestor. Each document type allows you to discover unique information. In the register of pauper cases refused, you will find out why a person was refused. Grounds for refusal included such reasons as the person refusing to work, arriving too late to be admitted and the gates being locked, or the person being violent or drunk. The superannuation register allows you to track your ancestor’s career in the workhouse. For example, the records show that Margaret Lewis was appointed on 14 January 1898 as a rate collector and then promoted to the registrar of births and deaths. In 1903, Margaret voluntarily resigned. Some of the records also recorded the type of work your ancestor participated in while in the workhouse such as breaking stones, scrubbing floors, or pulling oakum. The register of relief on loan provides details about individual’s payments and whether they were able to pay. Some records showed that the person was too poor to pay, had left the district, or died.