Fairford Workhouse, the ‘House of Industry’ opened in the Croft in 1773. There were 23 inmates in 1803 when the men dug stones in ‘ye Crofts’ and the women were paid 8d per pound spun flax and 6d per pound of woven sheeting. From that year’s income of £37, the Governor was paid a salary of £15, Barber Cowley received 6s 6d for ‘shaving ye old men’. Sarah Cowley had a new pair of stays costing 2s 6d; the inmates had 4s 3d between them to spend at the November fair, and the rest was expended on a hundredweight of soap, pig killing, funerals, tin cups and Epsom salts. The work house was pulled down in 1870 and the stones used to build the Infants’ School. It was approximately on the site of where Fairford Hospital is now.
Taken from June Lewis’s History of Fairford. 1982