The Workhouse
A large workhouse was located at the east side of what is still known as Workhouse Road in the village. It was built in 1725 and extended in 1836. It appears to have had a large H-shaped main building with a number of other smaller ancillary buildings. Records indicate that the workhouse could accommodate 800 souls although in 1876 there were only 51 people there; however, the highest number staying there between 1866 and 1876 was 116 in January 1869. Other records show that the annual salaries bill for the officers and those who worked at the Union Workhouse was £293. The Tunstead workhouse issued its own coinage in the form of workhouse tokens in the early 19th century when there was a national shortage of copper coins. The tokens could be spent locally to buy bread and other basic commodities. The graveyard where people were buried when they died in the workhouse lies to the south of the site. The Union Workhouse, for the Hundreds of Tunstead, as it was known, closed its doors when the National Health Service was founded in 1948 and much of the old workhouse was demolished in the 1950s. It is thought that because the workhouse was situated in the village, the local district council was the Smallburgh Rural District Council and, indeed, members of that council met in the board room of the workhouse until its closure. The Smallburgh Rural District Council then met in special council offices in Stalham until its demise on 31 March 1974, when it was subsumed within the North Norfolk District Council under local government re-organization.
Read more about this topic: Smallburgh