The relief can be found above the main doorway of Freedom House on Greenbank Terrace, built in 1909 in the Edwardian Baroque style.
The building originally housed the offices of the Board of Guardians, the body responsible for overseeing poor relief in Plymouth. It later became the hospital’s nurses’ home and is now the only original building remaining from the former Freedom Fields Hospital complex.
The relief itself is full of historical clues, including a beehive, four towers and the dates 1630 and 1708.
The dates are particularly interesting. 1630 marks the establishment of the Hospital of the Poor’s Portion in Catherine Street, a charitable institution set up to provide for Plymouth’s poor.
Then, in 1708, an Act of Parliament brought the administration of poor relief in Plymouth under a Corporation of the Guardians of the Poor, which took over responsibility for the Poor’s Portion.
So what looks like a decorative carving above a doorway is actually a small piece of Plymouth’s social history, linking the building to centuries of efforts to care for the city’s poor and vulnerable.
Photographs © Wayne Perry / Plymouth Post