Eleemosynary - I think that obscure and possibly obsolete word is one of my favourites. So this week I am devoting my article to some eleemosynaryness in Greenwich.
In both
east and west Greenwich there are several different types of housing. - Some are obvious – there are the posh old
houses in west Greenwich; there are council
flats, some of them modern and others built in the 1930s by the London County
Council and there is late 19th century private housing. There are also
estates of 19th century cottage housing - smaller than the private
housing but still not flats. I guess most people will assume that they are housing
built for rent in the 19th century and since sold off. That is certainly true
of some of them but not all. East Greenwich in particular has a lot of housing
like this and it is very largely charitable. Built to house the ever growing
population who came to work here in the expanding local industries.
In 1975 what was then Greenwich and Lewisham Antiquarian
Society published an article by Julian Watson, who was then Greenwich’s Local History
librarian. In it Julian listed charities
which operated in Greenwich who provided housing. He doesn’t talk about the
largest such provider –Morden College - which had a huge estate in east
Greenwich – but they are so big and so important that they need a book to
themselves! Julian wrote about other housing charities. Some of them are quite modern like the Penn
almshouses in West Greenwich which was set up in the late 19th century by the
Penn family, owners of the engineering works on Blackheath Hill. However others
date from the early 17th century.
All
over the country charities were set up in the early 17th century to provide
facilities for the poor and for old people and they also set up schools - many
of which have become what we now call 'public schools'. A century earlier Henry
VIII had broken with the Catholic Church and then closed all the monasteries
and other Catholic institutions around the country. we all know about this and were taught at school about the great religious
divide and the differences between the Catholics and Protestants, However it also involved a complete breakdown
of what we would think of as ‘social services’ - provision for old people, schools, help for the destitute and poor. In 1601 there was a serious attempt to
confront these problems in the Poor Law Act which formed the basis for welfare
for succeeding centuries. It still resonates today despite the fact that is has
been replaced by the concept of ‘cradle to grave’ care and the welfare state. The
Elizabethan Poor Law gave responsibility for those in need to the parish, which
over the centuries have become local authorities.
One of the
issues n the 17th century was the provision of housing for the poor and
there were many attempts to provide for old people by building almshouses. We
have several examples in Greenwich. One of the best known is Trinity College
which provides for a particular sort of pensioner old men
from a specific area. But what I’m
going to write about for the rest of this article is the Hatcliffe Charity
which still owns an estate of housing and many shops - they currently have a
planning application for a new block of flats in Woolwich Road.
Julian’s
account of Hatcliffe is the shortest in his article - there is just one
paragraph about its foundation. I think this is because a lot of the earlier
records of the charity have disappeared and the information just wasn’t
available. I’m pleased to say that this has been confronted and a lot of
research has been done about the charity to celebrate its 400 year anniversary
and a very nice booklet has been produced – ‘400
years of philanthropy 1620 to 2022 William Hatcliffe a History’. I’d like
to look at that book and recommend that people other people look at it too
The
charity was set up following a big bequest in 1620 from William Hatcliffe. He
was the third generation of his family involved in national politics and they seem
to have originated at the village of Hatcliffe in Lincolnshire. This is a village of the ‘blink and you’ll miss
it’ variety. I would recommend a quick look at Google Street View since Google seems
to have picked a particularly blossom filled day for their filming. It won’t
tell you very much about William Hatcliffe but it is a very, very pretty place
to look at.
A great
deal of the research done on the Hatcliffe family traces their origins to this
village but much of it is conjectural. Although there are very strong reasons for
thinking that the William Hatcliffe who left money to Greenwich is correctly
identified it is not 100% necessarily reliable
William’s
grandfather, Thomas Hatcliffe, appears to have been a court official under Henry
VIII and that’s why he spent much of his time in Greenwich. His son followed on
with what he had done. Both father and
son were Clerks of The Green Cloth – which is an extremely important role in
the management of the Royal household. It involved co-ordinating various Royal household
functionaries and auditing their accounts. It also had a role as an actual Court
with various legal functions normally held by the judiciary. This role would make them influential and also
extremely rich. We can imagine that the land holdings in Greenwich, which later
composed the charity’s source of income, were the result of careful investments
on their part. Perhaps we should note that later in the 17th
century the role of the Clerk of the Green Cloth was held by members of the Evelyn
family in Deptford. We should also note
that it was a role only abolished in 2004.
William
Hatcliffe appears to have been ‘Avener’ to James 1st. This is a post to do with looking after the
King’s horses. It is also suggested that he was a lawyer. He died unmarried and
left the bulk of his fortune to the charity. He also made some bequests to
family members - he left £30 to his sister to buy herself ‘mourning clothes’. That’s
well over £7,000 in today’s money. Perhaps she had to buy clothes
for a whole entourage- but even so!
There
is a theory that he was the Mr WH to whom Shakespeare dedicated his sonnets but
that’s a story for another day
Hatcliffe's two sisters immediately objected
to his will and a commission was set up to examine it... I think it is from the proceedings of this commission
that the researchers for the anniversary
book have learnt most about Hatcliffe and his family.
The
commission set up three trusts; one to manage provision for the poor in
Greenwich and another separate trust for Lewisham. The third trust was to manage
the property portfolio. Even today the estate charity is separately managed
and passes sums of money over to the almshouse charities which manage those facilities.
There is also now a charity trust to cover Lee.
Very briefly: in Lewisham the charity
originally set up an almshouse but it has had a complicated relationship with
Colfe’s charity. The charity is currently building a new almshouse in Lewisham.
In Lee there was provision for an Infant School from 1857 but this has changed to
care to provide for education of people fewer than 25
The property managed by the estate
charity trustees is very largely in Greenwich. There is a block of housing
between Maze Hill Station and Trafalgar Road. These houses are from the mid
19th century and have been improved ever since as tenancies expire and
circumstances change. Many of them were converted into flats in the 1960s and
1970s and are now being converted back into whole houses as demand changes. The
charity always needs to keep in mind their remit to provide help for the poor of
the Parish of Greenwich and this they endeavour to do.
The trust also owns land in Woolwich Road,
now largely occupied by shops and it has been renewing them as leases expire. Some old-leases can be very difficult and
involve much work by lawyers to get back down to the freehold. The work of the charity is about ensuring the
continued value of the estate in order to fund the almshouse charities. They too need to help the poor of Greenwich
- but they now work in a world which William Hatcliffe could never have envisaged.
The shops and pubs in Woolwich Road
suffered badly from Second World War bombing – and this saw the end of a pub
called ‘The Hatcliffe Arms’ which stood in tiny Hatcliffe Street. I don’t know if it was on the same site as
the recent rather bad news pub which was on the corner of that street – I used
to he told by residents on the Flamstead Estate behind that they could smell
the pub gents in their flats – lovely!
However that pub has now been replaced by the estate charity with a bright
new block.
The almshouse block in Tusker Street
was originally for single women and widows. It was built in 1857 on Ballast Field – the
field from which gravel was dug to sell to ships as ballast to compensate for
the weight lost when cargo had been removed.
What I remember of it is that it is
probably not the most convenient building for elderly people consisting of
rooms off a staircase and originally occupants would have been expected to share
bathroom and kitchen facilities. This has
been sorted out but it is still an old building. Originally it would be full of
local women over 60 who were not guilty of insobriety, insubordination,
breaching regulations and no immoral or improper behaviour. In 2009 the Charity
Commission allowed the charity to reduce the age of beneficiaries to 55 and to take
in men and, more importantly, to give grants to ‘help at home’ -to help people
able to live independently in their own homes and remain there.
The almshouses remain important and there
are always women around who in retirement do not have the luxury of their own
homes and need to look for somewhere to live.
In communities all round the country there are almshouses - often set up
like Hatcliffe in the early 17th century. They tend to get ignored in modern social
services provision – we don’t see them as part of the modern benefits packages but
they fulfil a role and help many people with no recourse to their own permanent
home and give then somewhere to live,
The best thing you can do is read the
book – I understand that there may be a few copies with the charity’s clerk.
Oh – and eleemosynary means it’s to do
with charities.
And happy 400th birthday to Hatcliffe
,
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