Short Trips --- Kedleston Hall and Southwell Workhouse

Our day trip to visit Hardwick Hall was so well received by the students that we took two more trips so that other students could to along.

Grand entrance to Keddleston

The first was to Kedleston Hall, which is a neo-classical mansion from the 1700s. It was designed for lavish entertainment and to show off an extensive collection of paintings, furnishings, and sculpture.  The grounds are extensive with a private lake, picturesque bridge and sheep grazing right on the front lawn. As we looked across the fields, the view was exactly as we had pictured the English countryside on a beautiful fall day.

Chasing sheep (with cameras) at Keddleston Hall

On the following day we took yet another group of students to the village of Southwell to see the parish church and The Workhouse. We had been to Southwell earlier in the summer and visited the Minster, an impressive church to be in such a small town. We stopped there again so the students could see it and then traveled on to The Workhouse.

Students explore Southwell Minster

The Workhouse was originally a place where poor people could live when all other options had been exhausted -- a 19th century version of welfare. People applied for admittance with the assumption that they wouldn't stay very long. By design, conditions were Spartan -- food was boring and meager (think Charles Dickens and Oliver: "More gruel please"), and idleness was not accepted.

The Workhouse -exterior

Families were separated, with men in one wing, women in another, and their children in yet another separate part of the building. There were also separate sections for the "aged and infirm," "weak minded" people, and those who were "morally deprived" (primarily, unwed mothers).

Recreated interior room

The British welfare system has changed a bit over the years!

The UK, our closest ally in the world, openly boasts a socialist system. Health care is free, cradle to grave (or as they say here, "basket to casket"). Old age pensions are generous compared to U.S. Social Security benefits. Nottingham has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and one of the highest numbers of under-age unwed mothers anywhere in Europe. Those statistics center on our neighborhood! Rent-subsidized "Council housing" (what are called in American cities, "the projects") are nearby.

A Workhouse room as it was when the facility was closed in the 1970s

With audacious manor houses like Kedleston Hall standing near places like the Southwell Workhouse, England has long known about disparity between the very rich and the very poor. Nevertheless, as the Conservative government here pushes for cut-backs in spending, the Occupy Wall Street movement has caught on here, with a large camp on the grounds of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, and even a small camp in front of the Nottingham City Council Chambers. Any way you look at it, welfare in Britain isn't what it used to be! But the "right" system, perhaps, has yet to be found anywhere.