CHARITIES.
The leper hospital commonly said to
have been in Tewkesbury in 1200 (fn. 1) was not there but
at Touques (Calvados) in Normandy. (fn. 2) At that time,
however, another charitable foundation may have
existed, for up to the Dissolution the Abbot of
Tewkesbury was obliged to provide money in fixed
proportions for the food, clothing, and rent of 13
almsmen or beadsmen belonging to the town and
parish of Tewkesbury, and the almsmen were
known as the founder's almsmen. Between 1540 and
1554 the allowances were paid to the receiver general
of the monastery, and meanwhile nine of the almsmen died; in 1554 the queen refounded the charity,
appointing nine new almsmen and declaring that
when a vacancy occurred the queen's vicechamberlain should fill it, as formerly the abbot had,
by choosing one of three candidates nominated by
the bailiffs of the town. (fn. 3) The charity thereafter
became known as Queen Mary's Almsmen. The
borough chamberlain received a lump sum for the
allowances from the auditor for the county, who
deducted £2 0s. 8d. for a stamp for the receipt: the
bailiffs paid the remaining £33 16s. to the almsmen
in the form of a simple 1s. a week each, which also
overcame the difficulty that there was no house for
the almsmen for which the rent was to be paid. (fn. 4) By
the late 17th century the choice of new almsmen
appears to have lain entirely with the corporation, (fn. 5)
so that the charity had become in effect merely one
of several doles under the management of the
corporation.
Another medieval endowment comprised lands
and tenements called Baldwin's lands, which were
worth £7 14s. 3d. a year in 1549, when the rents
were spent on various things including poor relief. (fn. 6)
Part of the endowment may have escaped forfeiture
and survived among the houses and gardens which
Giles Geast, by his will dated 1558, gave to trustees
who were to distribute the rents to the poor and be
accountable to the bailiffs of the town. (fn. 7) The income
in the late 17th century was c. £20, and the trustees
were then also responsible for two smaller charities
for the poor, land producing c. £6 a year given by a
Mr. Mince and John Carver before 1683, and a
house producing c. £4 a year given by Margaret
Hicks by will dated 1562. (fn. 8) Mince and Carver's
charity is not subsequently recorded; Mince may
have been the Richard Mince who by will dated
1665 gave a rent-charge for the repair of the Long
Bridge. (fn. 9) In the 18th century the trustees became
responsible also for the charity of Anne Slaughter,
being the rent of a garden and a rent-charge of 10s.,
given by deed in 1618; the rent-charge appears to
have been replaced by a piece of meadow in Severn
Ham. In the late 18th century the Geast trustees
distributed the charities in sixpenny pieces which
they gave to supplicants as they walked about the
town. Although the practice, known as the running
sixpences, was abandoned, distribution in sixpences
continued until 1808. In 1813 the trustees pulled
down three of their houses and built three new ones
with a loan, on the repayment of which they were
spending £100 out of their aggregate income of
£251 a year in 1828; the remaining income was
spent on repairs to the property and on blankets and
sheets for the poor. (fn. 10) In 1874 the Geast charity was
regulated by a Scheme of the Charity Commissioners, and in 1881 another Scheme, consolidating
the small charities of the town as the Tewkesbury
Consolidated Charities, included the Hicks and
Slaughter charities. In 1961 the Geast charity had
an income of £448, of which a quarter came from
stock representing the proceeds of sale of some of
the houses, and the whole income was spent on
administration and on repairs and improvements to
the remaining houses. (fn. 11)
Although the Geast trustees were under the
supervision of the corporation, and the corporation
had direct control of most of the other eleemosynary
charities, the charities were small and numerous
enough to cause overlapping and inequalities in their
distribution. In 1821 a committee of inhabitants was
appointed to examine the state of the charities, (fn. 12)
anticipating the work of the Charity Commissioners.
In 1881 it was said that some 3,000 of the inhabitants, well over half the total population, were
receiving charitable doles. (fn. 13) A Scheme of that year
consolidated all the charities in the town that were
worth less than £50 a year and were limited to the
maintenance of the poor and the upkeep of the
churches. The income and expenditure was divided
between three branches: Queen Mary's Almsmen,
the almshouse branch, and the church branch. (fn. 14)
Of the 32 charities comprised in the Tewkesbury
Consolidated Charities there were three, apart from
Queen Mary's Almsmen, that were almshouse
charities. Edward Richardson by will dated 1652
gave £60 stock for the poor, with which in 1653 the
officers of the corporation bought a row of seven
cottages in Gander Lane. (fn. 15) The cottages were
repaired in 1739 with money belonging to the town
charities. (fn. 16) There was no other endowment than
the almshouses themselves, and in 1828, when they
were occupied by seven poor persons and their
families, they were overcrowded. (fn. 17) The Scheme of
1881 ruled that the seven occupants should be either
single or man and wife alone; in 1922 the number of
occupants was reduced to five, and in 1957 was
raised again to seven. (fn. 18) Sir Francis Russell, by deed
of 1674, gave a range of buildings north of the abbey
church, together with various plots of land, for the
use of 10 poor widows aged 50 or more. (fn. 19) The
buildings comprised five rooms up and five rooms
down c. 1700. (fn. 20) In 1828, when there were 10 apartments under one roof occupied by 10 widows, the
buildings were said to be so ruinous that they would
soon need to be demolished. (fn. 21) They were rebuilt in
1831–2 (fn. 22) as a range of 10 two-room dwellings on two
floors; the building is brick with a slate roof, and has
a Gothic, ashlar front, with the two entrance porches
carried up to form parapeted gables. In 1957 the
trustees were authorized to mortgage property to
enable them to improve the almshouses, and the
Scheme of that year reduced the number of
occupants to six. The other property given by the
founder was represented by a yard for which a rent
of £3 10s. was paid. (fn. 23) In 1830 Samuel Barnes built
a three-story block of almshouses in the Oldbury,
comprising 24 apartments of two rooms each. (fn. 24) His
gift of them to the corporation in his will was void,
but his heirs gave them to the corporation in 1834. (fn. 25)
The charity included an endowment of £348 stock.
Under the Scheme of 1881 there were to be 32
inmates including at least 16 single women; the
other 16 could include married couples. By 1955,
however, Barnes's almshouses were in such a poor
condition that they housed only one old woman,
and it was said to be too late to save the building; (fn. 26)
it was demolished soon afterwards.
Richardson's and Russell's almshouses were
among those under the management of the borough
corporation in 1828. (fn. 27) For the benefit of Russell's
almshouses, Henry Collett by will dated 1803 gave
the reversion of £250 stock, but the gift had not
taken effect by 1828; (fn. 28) and Elizabeth Dillon (d.
1847) (fn. 29) gave £1,000 by codicil to her will. For the
benefit of Richardson's almshouses Mary Terrett
by will proved in 1866 gave £448 stock; by the same
will she also gave £223 stock for coals for the poor. (fn. 30)
The eleemosynary charities consolidated in 1881
included another three which were vested in the
corporation by 1706: William Alley's of £100 given
by will dated 1625, of which the capital was invested
in rent-charges; William Ferrers's, who by his will
dated 1625 gave not only an endowment for the
grammar school but also £5 a year for the poor; and
Baptist Hicks, Viscount Campden's (d. 1629), of half
the profits of the rectory of St. Ishmael's (Pembs.),
which was worth in all over £80 clear in 1828 and of
which the other half was paid to the Vicar of Tewkesbury. By 1828 the corporation had in addition the
management of four other charitable funds: John
Wright by deed of 1635 gave a rent-charge of 20s.
for the poor for bread; Thomas Coventry, Lord
Coventry (d. 1661) gave by will £300 for the poor,
which was laid out in a rent-charge of £15; William
Wilson by will dated 1726 gave £100 stock for the
poor; and in 1734 £70, which was all that remained
of £200 given in 1651 by the same Lord Coventry to
buy materials for putting the poor to work was
added to £30 belonging to the poor from other
sources, £100 given to the corporation for the poor
by Daniel Kemble by will dated 1732, and £100
given to the churchwardens and overseers by
Elizabeth Hopton by will dated also 1732, the sum
being invested in land from which the rent went
one-third to the churchwardens and overseers and
two-thirds to the corporation's general fund for the
poor, which received all the income for the charities
(except Queen Mary's Almsmen) under the
management of the corporation. The gross income
in 1828 was nearly £100, of which £60, called the
bailiffs' shillings, was distributed by the bailiffs, the
four justices, and the town clerk, each disposing of
an equal share at his own discretion but within one
of the three districts into which the town was
divided for this purpose. Some of the remaining
income was spent on repairs to the almshouses.
Several recent events gave a bad impression of the
administration of the general fund. (fn. 31)
All the above charities were included in the
Scheme of 1881, though William Alley's was afterwards lost and was not included in the later Schemes
of 1922, 1932, and 1957. (fn. 32) The other eleemosynary
charities included in the Tewkesbury Consolidated
Charities were those of Margaret Hicks and of Anne
Slaughter, mentioned earlier; of Juliana Best, who
by deed of 1567 gave a rent-charge of 6s. 8d. of
which half was for the poor; of William Curtis, who
by deed of 1681 gave the reversion of 5 a. for poor
widows of Tewkesbury, from which the rent of £10
was said in 1828 to be too diffusely and indiscriminately administered; of William Wakeman (d.
c. 1681), who by will gave a rent-charge of 20s. for
the poor; of John Read who gave by will dated 1682
£50 to be spent on land for the poor; of John Porter
and Daniel Kemble, who by wills dated respectively
1699 and 1732 gave their several shares of 2 a. for
bread for the poor; of Robert Wriggan who by will
dated 1701 gave £5 which was laid out in land with
Read's gift; of Charles Wynde (d. 1716) who by will
gave a rent-charge out of which £5 5s. was to be
spent on bread and 10s. to be distributed in cash
among the poor attending the parish church; of
Edward Popham (d. 1753) who by will gave £200 for
the poor; of Sarah Hall who by will dated 1776 gave
£200 for women's gowns; (fn. 33) and of Thomas Blizzard
(d. 1855) who gave £300, governed by a trust deed
of 1859, for bread for the poor. (fn. 34) Some of the
charities included gifts for the church, and others
included in the Tewkesbury Consolidated Charities
were purely ecclesiastical. (fn. 35) In 1960 the combined
gross income of the charities was £430 (excluding a
grant of £136 from the Ministry of Housing and
Local Government); expenditure on the almshouse
branch was £401, and on Queen Mary's Almsmen
£30. (fn. 36)
The Tewkesbury Baptist charities, specified
above, (fn. 37) included gifts for poor Baptists, and a
Scheme of 1889 by which further charities were
regulated provided that 2/5 of the income remaining
after the cost of repairs and administration had been
met and certain fixed sums had been set aside should
be spent on the poor. In 1959, however, almost the
whole income was spent on repairs and rates. (fn. 38)
Thomas Bevan's Congregational charity was partly
for the poor. (fn. 39) The Thomas Collins Almshouse
Trust, founded by deed of 1891, was endowed with
land and property which was sold in or after 1919;
the proceeds of sale, £1,050 stock, was held in trust
to provide houses for aged Wesleyans. (fn. 40)
Anne and Elizabeth Mines, by wills proved
respectively in 1874 and 1865, gave £500 stock each,
the income to be for vouchers for goods in kind and
for the general benefit of the poor; the income was
distributed in the form of vouchers in 1960. Michael
Cray Smart, by will proved 1901, gave £473 stock
for coal for the poor of Holy Trinity parish; the
income was so spent in 1960. (fn. 41)
In 1890 the Revd. Charles William Grove built
and endowed a range of four almshouses in the
Oldbury as a memorial to his wife, Frances Emily
(d. 1886). The endowment yielded £461 in 1961,
of which part was spent on the almsmen's stipends
but most on repairs and administrative costs. (fn. 42)
Lost charities include that of Mince and Carver,
mentioned above, and a rent-charge of 22s. 4d.
given by a Mr. Galley before 1683 and not recorded
after 1706. (fn. 43) John Roberts of Fiddington (d. 1632)
gave by will £20 for coal for the poor, which appears
to have been lost soon afterwards. (fn. 44) The ambitious
plan for almshouses in Tewkesbury under the will of
Lt.-Col. John Harvey Ollney (d. 1836) never took
effect. (fn. 45)