Former Westcliffe Hospital, Turnhurst Road, Chell, Stoke-on-Trent - Archaeological Investigation Final Report

In December 2013, a planning application (Planning Application SOT/56179) was submitted to Stoke-on-Trent City Council for the redevelopment of a c 2.2ha site off Turnhurst Road in Chell, Stoke-on-Trent (centred on NGR 386700 353165). The proposals detailed in the application allow for the erection of a residential development, comprising a 140 apartment extra care retirement unit, with associated communal and retail/commercial facilities, which includes the refurbishment of an existing lodge building. Associated ground works, car parking, landscaping and the erection of a substation will also be required, which will inevitably necessitate earth-moving works.
The application site was occupied from the early 1840s by the Wolstanton & Burslem Union Workhouse, which was one of a several new workhouses that were erected in the wake of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The workhouse was expanded during the second half of the nineteenth century and remained in use until 1948, when it became part of Westcliffe Hospital and the component buildings were adapted for hospital use. Most of the former workhouse was demolished in the late twentieth century to enable a new nursing home to be erected, although a detailed record of these buildings was compiled prior to their ultimate loss. A further programme of historic building recording was carried out by in 2008, which was focused on the New Infirmary, the Lodge, and the Vagrants’ Ward. The latter building was in poor structural condition at the time of the archaeological survey in 2008, precluding any recording of its interior prior to their demolition, and thus its internal layout remained uncertain.