ABOUT CATRIN
This project explores the history of the Ffestiniog Union Workhouse, located in Penrhyndeudraeth. The location functioned as a workhouse for just under 100 years, from 1834 until workhouses were abolished in Wales under the Local Government Act in 1930. The location has invited death and brutality since its construction. Housing society’s outcasts, the system did not discriminate by age, from new-borns to the elderly. There were 300 documented deaths during its first 100 years, though it is widely believed the number easily surpasses double that. Poor record keeping has resulted in very little information being kept about the inmates and the dead are supposedly buried in mass graves in cemeteries nearby. In 1948, the carcass of the Ffestiniog Union Workhouse became a district hospital, Bron Y Garth, open until late 2008, further adding to the collection of souls this vessel held.
