Delights of Abbey Dore

You may find yourself sipping tea in the conservatory of the Abbey Dore Court Garden. There is no particular history attached to the present building, but it stands on the site of the former Red Lion public house. Here, in 1837, took place the inaugural meeting of the Board of the Dore Union Guardians, and weekly meetings for two years thereafter. It was their job to commission, construct, and manage a workhouse in the locality. The unworkable law, under which each parish was meant somehow to cope with its own poor, had been replaced by the Poor Law Act. Thus the 'Union' was a group of 29 parishes. Another facet of the 1834 legislation was compulsory provision of schooling for workhouse children. At that time there were five workhouses within the bounds of Hereford City, one of which subsequently served as part of the County Hospital. Right up until its demolition in 2002 the building still bore the stigma, among elderly people, of having been 'a poorhouse', raising their reluctance to be admitted to it.

'Riverdale', as the Dore workhouse buildings are marked on the map today, is a remote place, well away from Abbey Dore itself, which has never been a metropolis. The most disliked rule, and perhaps the least necessary, was the one that forbade 'inmates' to leave the premises. The rules of the workhouse - in fact, taken from one in Hereford - were strict but not Draconian; criminal acts were rare. Breaches were often punished by reducing diet (but such punishment could not be given to children). The diet's key elements were bread, gruel (an inferior porridge, of oatmeal and water) and potatoes. Five ounces of meat per person were allowed two days per week and one-and-a-half ounces of cheese on four days per week. One wonders if they might have been more productive had they eaten more! Most of the residents were aged or infirm; many had additionally suffered some other misfortune: blind persons, abandoned wives, unmarried mothers, and so on; and many in the workhouse were children.

In 1929 legislation transferred responsibility for residents of poorhouses to county councils. During the Second World War the Dore workhouse was used for tractor assembly. The buildings were subsequently converted into a modest number of private dwellings, but in the height of their workhouse days they had accommodated between 80 and 100 men, women and children, reduced to 68 in the 1870s. Nevertheless, the physical conditions inside the workhouse may have been little worse, if at all, than those of many agricultural workers living within its 29 parishes, who endured the discomfort of damp and cramped cottages without a solid floor.

Where to eat and drink

Ewyas Harold has the Temple Bar Inn and the Dog Inn, a bar, bistro and free house. In Abbey Dore the Neville Arms serves cask ales (and fine meals). At Abbey Dore Court Garden tea rooms, tea and wonderful cakes are served in the courtyard or the conservatory.

While you're there

Aside from the scenery, it's primarily Dore Abbey that draws people to this part of Herefordshire. Originally part of the great Cistercian abbey, much of it was built between 1175 and about 1220. It was restored and re-roofed as a parish church by the somewhat philanthropic Viscount Scudamore in the 1630s; he also added the tower. The roof is currently (2003) being re-tiled using local sandstone. In Ewyas Harold St Michael's Church, apart from being a fine building in its own right, contains a 13th- or 14th-century effigy of a lady holding her heart in her palm.

What to look for

Beyond Ewyas Harold a spinney conceals a Norman motte and bailey, with a maximum height of 42ft (13m). Looking east, over the rooftops of the abbey, is a stationary train. Resting where the railway has been disused for 45 years, it is used as military training equipment.