Out & About July 2017

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The Charity of Mrs Mabel Luke is unique in
Newbury and unusual among all almshouse
charities in that it was founded well into the
20th century. It also has no age restriction for
its residents: the founder expressly wished
that families with children be given priority.
The trustees of the Charity of Miss
Martha Smith – Lloyd Henry Baxendale
of Greenham Lodge, Rev Blagden of
Greenham Vicarage, Rev Stenning of
St Johns Vicarage and Aubrey Butler of
Sandleford Priory – put up for sale 19
building plots in the triangle of land between
Kings Road, Mill Lane and Denmark Road.
Mabel Luke, in a conveyance of January 13,
1928, purchased five plots fronting onto Mill
Lane. She built a terrace of four houses on
three of the plots, but the two largest plots
remained undeveloped.
The land of approximately half an acre, cost
£300 and was to be used to provide homes
for “the deserving poor, of the working
classes, resident for at least a year of the
town of Newbury or parish of Greenham”.
Later comments by Mabel Luke indicated
that she wished further houses to be
provided on the land from surpluses from
income.
In a deed of October, 24, 1928, Mabel Luke
transferred the land and houses to her
charity, The Charity of Mrs Mabel Luke. The
initial trustees were Mabel Luke, Margaret
Vyvyan Luke and Lloyd Henry Baxendale.
Mabel Luke’s own family seems to have
come from Surrey and include several
lawyers and members of the clergy.
Her father Frederick Clifford was a lobby
correspondent in Parliament and became
editor of Macmillans Magazine, a political
monthly journal, in the 1890s, mixing
with politicians of all parties. He wrote
the seminal work on Private Members’
Parliamentary Bills.
Mabel was 33 when she married Stephen
Paget Walter Vyvyan ‘PV’ Luke, who was
more than 20 years her senior, in Kensington
in 1901. They had one daughter Margaret,
born in 1906.
PV Luke had had a career with the Indian
Telegraph Service. Although not a soldier, at
the outbreak of the Afghanistan Campaign
in 1878, he led the team that laid the first
overland telegraph through the Khyber Pass
into Kabul. He was mentioned in dispatches
and awarded the Afghan Medal and Clasp.
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