Out & About May 2017

Newbury, including Donnington, has an exceptionally large number of almshouses for its size: 142 in 2016, rising to 154 upon completion in 2018 of Mabel Luke Place in Mill Lane. Most are to be found in ‘the city’ area near Newtown Road, including King John’s Almshouses in Argyll Road, built by the church under royal charter of 1215 for a priest and ‘poor brothers’.

This is Newbury’s oldest almshouse site, although the current buildings date from only 1698. Several others were clustered around St Nicolas church, but have since been sold and money used to build further away from the river Kennet. [see timeline] Almshouses share two important features, wherever they are found: firstly, they owe their existence to an initial grant from a wealthy local landowner or merchant wishing to provide homes for poor residents of the town; secondly, the beneficiaries are not tenants but occupy their homes under a Licence Agreement. Benefactors of Newbury almshouses included Francis Winchcombe, a descendent of Jack of Newbury and member of that fabulously wealthy clothier family; Philip Jemmett, a Newbury-born London brewer; and John Kimber, one-time mayor of Newbury. Their contributions to Newbury’s prosperity are fairly well-known. All almshouses are managed by charitable trusts. Originally the clergy were often entrusted with management by donors. After the Reformation, and especially in the 19th-century, the power of the Church diminished and boards of trustees, who were regulated by the rules of the individual Trust Deed, more generally took on a management role. Often the town corporation appointed the trustees and sometimes they failed in their duties. It was not until the Charities Act of 1960 that the trustees were regulated under law.

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