 However, the introduction of the new regime had coincided with a "surge of prosperity" nationally; this ended about 1837 and a series of poor harvests together with the European Potato Failure due to potato blight that struck Northern Europe in the mid-1840s led to "the Hungry Forties", a period much more testing of the provisions for poor relief.The new poor law encouraged the formation of Poor Law Unions combining individual parishes to give an administrative unit large enough to support the provision of segregated accommodation to house the various categories of paupers.On 11 July 1835 at the first meeting of the Board of Guardians of the newly formed Andover Union, it was decided to commission the construction of a new workhouse "calculated to contain 400 persons."