Westport Workhouse

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The following information was provided by Mr Steve Dolan, Manager of The Irish Workhouse Centre, Portumna, Co. Galway

The Westport Poor Law Union was officially declared in 1840. The Workhouse was opened in 1845 at a cost of £9,800. It was built to house a maximum capacity of 1,000 inmates, but census records show that the true number of inmates reached as high as 1,595 in 1848. The Westport Workhouse was built to accomodate people from the areas of Achill, Aughagower, Ballycray, Clare Island, Clogher, Kilmaclasser, Kilmeena, Louisburgh, Newport, and Westport.

The site of the Westport Workhouse is now occupied by a housing estate.

References

	For more information see here	Ireland	VIEW SOURCE
	Old Westport Workhouse on facebook	Ireland	VIEW SOURCE

Type of Building:

Workhouse

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Hi All

While looking at an 1849 UK Parliamentary Paper reporting on aid given to some Poor Law Unions in the West of Ireland I ran across a list of names of people who had died in the Westport Workhouse in the weeks ending 17 Feb 1849 and 24 Feb 1849.

It's a long shot that anyone out there is researching these individuals (50+) but as lists of names are soooo rare I'm passing on the information in the hope that it helps someone.

The scanned document is available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/community.29943757.pdf?ab_segments=0%2…

at page 131 of the scan.

Cheers