Stow
 

Stow Almshouses

Additional clergy were provided in the late Middle Ages by chantry endowments. ⁷³  The guild or chantry of the Holy Trinity was connected with the hospital of the same name,  ⁷⁴  reputedly pre-conquest in origin. ⁷⁵ Chaplains of Stow recorded in the early 13th century  ⁷⁶  may have been associated with the hospital, but the chantry as such was founded in the mid-15th century by Robert Chester and re-founded in 1476 by William Chester. It included provision for an almshouse ⁷⁷  and part of the endowment was used for a school.  ⁷⁸  The secular functions of the guild were apparently able to save its property from forfeiture, ⁷⁹  and the school, ⁸⁰ and almshouse survived ⁸¹

^{Notes :-
73    e.g. Worc. Epis. Reg., Reg. Carpenter, f. 150b. : Hockaday Abs. xxviii, 1540 stipendiaries, f. 21; Chantry Certificates, Trans B.G.A.S. viii. 271; E 301/21/34.
74    Valor Eccl. (Rec Com.), ii. 436.
75    V.C.H. Glos. ii. 126.
76    Pleas of the Crown for Glos. ed. Maitland, p. 16; Close R. 1237-42, 134.
77    Hockaday Abs. ccclvi.
78    V.C.H. Glos. ii. 420.
79    E 178/886; E 310/14/54/46; E 310/14/55/9.
80    V.C.H. Glos. ii. 420.
81    See p 164.}

Source
Quoted from the Victoria County History, Gloucestershire, volume 6, page 160, by permission of the General Editor.
Submitted by Alan Longbottom

Charities

The almshouses known after their 16th century benefactot as Shepham's Almshouses presumably derived from the medieval hospital in Stow reputedly founded by Ethelmar.  ⁹⁰  By his will dated 1476 William Chester provided for the building or re-building of eight almshouses, in admission to which members of the Holy Trinity guild were to be given preference. The almspeople, who were to go to church daily, received 8d a week ( 12d for a man and wife living together) and were attended by a nurse. The almshouses were in use in the mid-16th century,  ⁹¹  and at the end of it were reorganized and rebuilt along with the school by Richard Shepham, apparently on the site where the 19th century buildings survived in 1961. The new arrangements, by which nine almspeople (with no nurse) were each to receive 1s a week, were ratified by a royal charter of 1612 making the bailiffs and burgesses of Chipping Norton (Oxon) governors of the almshouses. In addition, the almspeople benefited from the income of £200 given for their clothing by Jordan Mince by will dated 1768; from the income of £100 spent on their fuel, under the will of Edward Pitman, dated 1817; from a share of the £12 a year given to the poor of Stow by William Cope by will dated 1691 (the remainder being divided among the poor not in the almshouses) ; and from half the income, spent on fuel, of £300 given by Mrs Mary Hicks by will dated 1805. In the 19th century, and probably earlier, the administration of all these charities and the selection of almspeople was left to the rector and churchwardens.  ⁹² In the mid-19th century the almshouses were rebuilt in two terraces, of six and three, the terrace of six facing south; formerly all nine had been in a single terrace facing north across the churchyard.  ⁹³ 

The almshouses and almshouse charities, together with other parochial charities, were reorganized under a Scheme of 1889. Nearly all the other charities were for distributing bread: Lady Juliana Tracy gave £50 before 1702, Thomas Compere £150 in 1715, John Greyhurst £50 in 1716, Joshua 

Aylworth £100 in 1720, Richard Freeman £20 soon afterwards, Danvers Hodges (d 1721) a £3 rent charge, Sarah Chamberlayne £50 by will dated 1734, and Thomas Selwyn or Selvin, a £1 rent charge at an unknown date. The capital sums were all laid out in land. Townsend's gift, by will dated 1682 of 2s a week for bread, was in fact used for education along with the sum given by him specifically for that purpose.. Half of Mary Hicks's gift (see above) was for bread and beef, and the immemorial rent-charge of 13s-4d on the Court House was by 1828 used for bread,  ⁹⁴ although earlier it had been used for church repairs,   ⁹⁵  John Harvey Olney, by will proved 1836, gave £200 in trust for distributing coal and blankets.  ⁹⁶  All these charities were for the whole ancient parish of Stow; there were two separate charities for Maugersbury, £10 for distributing bread, given by Sarah Chamberlayne by her will dated 1734 but apparently lost by 1828, and an allotment for the poor's fuel made at inclosure in 1766, of which the rent was distributed in cash by the rector in 1828. 

Apparently the poor of Stow town alone were intended to benefit by another allotment for fuel at the same inclosure.  ⁹⁷  

In the later 19th century all these charities were run by the rector in an autocratic manner; confusion and charges of misappropriation resulted. The charities except for the two fuel allotments, were sorted out by the Stow-on-the-Wold Parochial Charities Scheme of 1889, which included other than purely eleemosynary charities (though educational charities were excluded from the Scheme in 1906). Under the Scheme £52 a year was to be distributed to the almspeople, who were limited to four in number, and up to £20 a year was to be expended for the general benefit of the poor. ⁹⁸ 

In 1961 the almshouses had been condenmed as dwellings, but five were occupied and stipends continued to be distributed to the almspeople. The other charities for the poor were distributed in kind, the rent from the fuel allotments being spent on coal.  ⁹⁹ 

The Walter Reynolds Home of Rest was founded in 1929 in part of Stow that was in the ancient parish of Upper Swell by Reynolds's daughter, Mrs Ellen Teague, to provide rent-free accommodation for six aged inhabitants of Stow with limited means.  ¹⁰⁰ 

^{Notes :-
90     For the hospital see V.C.H. Glos. ii. 126, where it is wrongly stated, on the authority of a source referring to Stowe (Cambs)., that the hospital was for women. For the reputed  founder see above, p 159.
91     Hockaday Abs. cccxl, U. Slaughter 1549; ccclvi, 1536. 
92     21st Rep Com. Char. 176, 178-9, 182.
93     B.G.A.S. Libr., annotated copy of Royce, Stow, at p 43. 
94     21st Rep. Com. Char. 179-82.
95     Glos. R.O. D 1700/L 1. no. 9; Bodl. MS. Rawl. B. 323, f. 254b.
96     Copies of wills and other documents appertaining to the parochial charities of Stow St  Edward - by The Rector of Stow (R.W.Hippisley. (priv. print. Stow, 1889). 
97     21st Rep Com. Char. 182-4.
98     Char. Com. files.
99     Ex inf. the rector.
100   Char. Com. files.}

Source
Quoted from the Victoria County History, Gloucestershire, volume 6, pages 164-5, by permission of the General Editor.
Submitted by Alan Longbottom