Painswick Parish Almshouse and Hospitals

Falkland House, on the west side of the street opposite the chapel, was formerly the New Inn  ¹⁶  and incorporates a 17th century cottages and an 18th century assembly room. The inn had closed by 1879  ¹⁷  and the house was used as a convalescent and training home for a few years in the late 19th century  ¹⁸  before being converted for use as a residence, which it remained in 1972.

Development in the early 20th century included an estate east of the road where the Gyde almshouses and orphanage  ²⁰  were also built.

Scattered cottages were built north of the town near the Cheltenham road in the earlier 19th century. In the same area east of the road, a cottage used until c.1890 for housing children waiting emigration to Canada; the cottage then became a convalescent home for the Alexandra Children's Hospital for Hip Disease, which it remained until the First World War.  ²⁵

A lying-in charity was established in 1833  ⁵⁸  and some convalescent homes, a few of which are mentioned above, were attracted to the town in the late 19th century.

^{Notes :-
16    Docs. penes Mrs. L.W. Mathias of Falkland House.
17   Kelly's Dir. Glos.  (1879), 721.
18   Painswick Annual Reg.  65.
20    Hyett, Painswick,  133-5.
25   Painswick Annual Reg. 120;  Kelly's Dir. Glos.  (1914), 281.
58    Glos. R.O. D 6/R3.}

Source:
Quoted from the Victoria County History, Gloucestershire, volume 11, page 061, by permission of the General Editor.
Submitted by Alan Longbottom

Painswick Almshouses

Frederick Gyde (d. 1872) left approximately £10,000 for the benefit of the town of Painswick ⁹²  and the trustees subsequently played a major role in the provision of public services.  ⁹³  Edwin Francis Gyde (d. 1894), his brother, also left considerable sums to the town for founding alms-houses ,  which were designed by Sidney Barnsley and opened in 1913, and an orphanage, completed in 1918 to designs by P.R. Morley Horder, for Protestant orphans of the locality and blind or deaf and dumb children.  ⁹⁴  

^{Notes :-
92    Hyett, Painswick , 95-8.
93    See p. 62.
94     Char. Com. Reg.; Hyett,  Painswick,  133-5.}

Source:
Quoted from the Victoria County History, Gloucestershire, volume 11, page 087, by permission of the General Editor.
Submitted by Alan Longbottom