, dating from 1780.]] In British history, a workhouse, colloquially known as a 'spike', was a place where people who were unable to support themselves could go to live and work. The earliest recorded example of a workhouse dates to 1652 in Exeter although there is some written evidence that workhouses existed before this date. Records mention a workhouse in 1631 in Abingdonhttp://www.workhouses.org.uk/intro/. Relief of the Poor and Impotent, 1579, Scotland In 1579, an act of the Scottish Parliament "For Punishment of Strang and Idle Beggars, and Reliefe of the Pure and Impotent" laid the basis of the system of poor relief in Scotland. Each parish had to make a list of its own poor (those who had been born there or who had lived there for seven years or more), "that the aged, impotent, and pure people, suld have ludgeing and abiding places" , and to enable "heritors" or land-owners to take the children of beggars into unpaid