Out & About July 2017

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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.
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’.
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