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Today, St Peter's Hospital in Spital Road is a valuable NHS centre, with maternity services, stroke recovery, and a variety of outpatients clinics. But the grand buildings have an interesting history.
When Maldon's first workhouse, on Market Hill, was no longer adequate for the number of destitute people requiring its services, a new workhouse was planned on a five acre site in Spital Road. This much larger building, capable of sleeping around 450 inmates, was built in 1872 to designs by architect Frederick Peck, who created a number of similar workhouses around East Anglia, as well as public buildings such as Cambridge Town Hall and Islington Agricultural Hall.
Complete with a chapel at the front, the workhouse, which cost £20,000 to build, had its own kitchen, mortuary and infirmary wing for those unable to work. The physical conditions were undoubtedly less cramped than the first institution, but daily life was no less harsh, with families separated and husbands and wives put in separate buildings. Inmates were required to work hard for their food and accommodation, doing jobs such as "oakum-picking", separating the fibres on old rope so that it could be re-used. The implement used to do this job was a sharp spike, which led to the workhouse itself being nicknamed The Spike.
Those who died in the workhouse and whose relatives didn't claim them were buried in unmarked graves in Maldon Cemetery, with research suggesting around 40 people were buried in that fashion. In 2019 local funeral directors A G Smith donated and unveiled a memorial to those buried there.
