No place like home

Last month’s Mother-and-Baby Report laid bare the stigma felt by occupants of homes around Northern Ireland. While Coleraine’s former workhouse received only brief mention, Sadie Brown speaks publicly about her experience at Mountsandel Road over 70 years ago.

Sadie Brown was admitted to the ‘workhouse’ then known as Coleraine Welfare Hostel in the mid 1940s along with her mother and four siblings. WK6KC25 Pic: Ciaran Clancy

Reporter:

Peter Winter

Email:

peter.winter@thechronicle.uk.com

Tuesday 9 February 2021 10:06

FOR most of her life, Sadie Brown has been made to feel ashamed of the time she spent in Coleraine’s former workhouse.

Though it was then known as a Welfare Hostel, its purpose remained largely as it had when founded in the 1840s.

Workhouse buildings were designed to look cold and foreboding so the destitute were deterred from seeing them as anything other than a last resort.

But that's the situation Sadie’s mother found herself in when she and her four tiny children arrived in Mountsandel Road in the mid 1940s. However, Sadie is not ashamed.

*Full story in this week's Chronicle*