The
Present photograph shows all that is left of Massereene Hospital it was taken
down to make way for the new Tesco store. It was originally the Workhouse
and was built because of a Cholera epidemic in the town, the people who died
were quickly buried far from the town in what was called the 'Spittle
Field' which was between Greystone and Moylena roads. The building
was called the 'Antrim Poor Law Union Workhouse'
and it opened it's doors on the 19th September 1843. It had 40 beds with a
further 45 beds in the fever sheds, in the first ten years they admitted 7,274
paupers of which 1,051 died there. The people
where then buried in the Paupers Graveyard at
the rear of the building which is now Tesco's carpark!