The Irish Workhouse Centre

The Irish Workhouse Centre in Portumna, County Galway, preserves one of the most complete surviving workhouse complexes in Ireland. Workhouses were built across the country in the years before and during the Great Famine to house the destitute, and conditions inside them were deliberately harsh.

Guided tours take visitors through the surviving buildings and explain how the system operated, who ended up inside it and what became of them. It is a sobering but valuable stop for anyone interested in nineteenth-century Irish social history, and there is a shop and refreshments on site.